


Losing Grace

by Slanguage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Demons, Domestic, F/M, Heaven, Hell, Hunters but Not Hunters, M/M, New Generation of Winchesters, Original Characters - Freeform, Vessels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 77,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1405420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester doesn’t know what he did wrong, and Grace Winchester doesn’t know where she is.</p><p>When Grace is kidnapped by enemies from a time long since passed, her parents Dean and Castiel set off to find their daughter with nothing to go on but a few burnt sigils; meanwhile, Grace is in a race against time as she runs from an enemy that shouldn’t still be in the game, and she finds herself in the last place she expected to be. With the help of his brother Sam, Dean and Castiel are determined to find her; and, with the help of some familiar-but-unfamiliar faces, Grace is determined to save herself.</p><p>Dean is willing to give anything to save his daughter, but never expects what he finds—about the prophecies, about the return of a heavenly power, and about a box in the ground, and how the angels trapped inside are walking free…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hunting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story stops following canon after the mid-season finale of season nine. From Morte D'Kevin onwards, I have instead filled in an alternate ending. :)

__

 

__

 

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

They should have known better than to come here.

Grace Winchester watched like a shadow as the vampire she had been hunting moved casually around the barn he had taken residence in, the door open and everything, making her job exceedingly easier. She wanted to scoff at his air of ease, like he didn’t know the stories, how he thought he _knew_ he would be able to get away with killing three young women only hours outside of the city deemed the new safest place in the United States from the supernatural. She sat back in the dark, holding her machete carefully and silently at her side, angled away from the light, chewing on her lip to keep her from fidgeting and drawing his attention to her movements.

She would have thought, by now, that the monsters would have learned something about the people that hunted them.

Sioux Falls was the place of monsters’ nightmares. This was the setting of the stories they told around campfires late at night to scare their friends. There are endless amounts of stories and fear of this place, of friends and family that poked at the edges of the city like they were poking a sleeping bear, thinking themselves invincible, and they never came back. They whispered about how it was Winchesters—how the most feared of all hunters were the ones that lived here, were the ones that protected this place. And, even if most of them steered clear, even if most of them knew better, they still came anyway.

And that was why her father had trained her. He didn’t want to—she remembers the funny look he got on his face when she was ten, and her parents decided to bring it up, and they said that she was old enough to understand the implications of her name. She could still recall to this day how her father had a sour expression when he taught her everything he could about hunting, about monsters, about how to hunt them and kill them. It was hard to forget the horrified look on his face when she was fifteen and told him that she wanted to spend her life hunting.

Grace was a warrior, not by choice but by obligation. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t embrace it in a way her father obviously hoped she wouldn’t.

She looked back to the monster that had crept too close to home, a million strategies rolling through her mind.

Her father’s voice, safe inside her own mind, muttered, _What the hell did I tell you about your back right, damn it._

Her eye twitched involuntarily, but she did what her mind was unconsciously reminding her to do—she remembered many lessons in their basement, when her dad’s eyes would watch her carefully and correct every move, find every weakness. She remembered how irritated he got when she made the same mistake what must have been more than twenty times in a row, and her father, although generally impatient, was willing to explain again and again to her what she was doing wrong so she could make it right.

She remembered how he put his hand on her back, to the right, and he said to her, “Grace, this is your weak spot—your blindside. If any ugly sees you’re not watching your back, it’s game over. Got it?”

“Back right,” she had relayed back to him, and he had nodded, and she had never made the same mistake again.

But, still, sometimes she had to remind herself.

Grace heard a snapping twig behind her, and she nearly cursed.

It came from the back _left_ , of course.

She whirled, her hand holding the machete already slicing through the air, but vampires were a bit known for having a constant adrenaline rush—it knocked her hand away and struck at her hard, hitting her arm raised defensively, and Grace stumbled backwards with a growl. She used all of her weight and momentum to swing again, this time catching home as the vampire’s head severed from its neck, the sick sound of the head thumping against the ground moments before the body always enough to make her stomach turn. She looked back at the body and reached her free hand into her jacket to grab her lighter, always paranoid.

She heard them before she saw them, and she groaned. “ _Seriously_?” she muttered rhetorically, her eyes flashing as she turned all the way around, where three more vampires were already waiting for her at the break in the trees. She narrowed her eyes. “Couldn’t possibly be more dramatic, could you?”

But, on the inside, she was panicking.

Despite being eighteen and having been trained by the best, Grace didn’t exactly get to go out on a lot of hunts. Her father wanted to maneuver her neatly away from this lifestyle to the best of his ability, and that meant that she only went hunting with _him_ or she didn’t go out at all. She snuck solo hunts in on nights where she was supposed to be staying at a friend’s house, and she’s pretty sure the more perceptive of her parents caught onto it long ago, so this wasn’t her first hunt.

But she still wasn’t up to par with her father’s skill. She wasn’t quite good enough to fight a lot of uglies on her lonesome just yet. And that the vampire had seemed to know that, had called for friends when he must have caught her scent—it was a rookie mistake. It was a joke.

Two more vampires dissolved from the dark on her right, and she grinned at them, wagging her eyebrows.

“Come on, boys!” she called out tauntingly, pulling a spare machete out of its holster with her free hand, twirling both of them teasingly at the predators watching her with hungry eyes. “At least one of you must be undying to get a bite out of a Winchester!”

And then they were all falling on her at once.

Grace was trained. She was a warrior, really. She knew all of the moves her father did, and she knew all of the skills that would get her out of this situation alive. She just never really expected how difficult it would be to perform those tasks in this situation, especially when she wasn’t expecting a complication. She kicked and she slashed with her sharpened blades, but she felt her skin rip and her blood stung when it hit the air, and she knew that would do nothing but start a feeding frenzy, and that was never a good thing.

Two were down, joining their buddy on the ground. The three left—two men and a manly woman—were circling her, snarling, looking hungry. Grace flexed her arm, feeling the pulse of where the skin had broken open, and she grinned.

“This isn’t even a challenge!” she heckled despite herself, her panic hot and cold in her veins, but she couldn’t keep herself from taunting them, not wanting them to see worry on her face. She smirked at them and waited, and then the woman bounded forward, and Grace flipped out of the way, using both of the machetes to cross and tear into her neck, severing it neatly.

Her adrenaline was pulsing fast, and her blood was singing the song of being able to prove her parents wrong—a child’s dream and a child’s aspiration, but the need drove her to do reckless things like this, made her itch to prove them wrong once and for all—and she was too busy reveling in her oncoming victory that she didn’t notice the ugly ambushing her from behind until she felt the hands on her back and she was flying through the air, hitting a tree hard, and the breath was knocked out of her as she crumpled to the ground, her head spinning as she tried to find her bearings.

“Oh,” she heard a familiar voice say from above her, a growl of anger, “ _that_ was a mistake.”

She rocketed up to her feet with a new shock to her system, her heart beating in overdrive, basically knowing that she was really and truly fucked. She swung at the vampire that had ambushed her, the only one that had stuck around to make sure she didn’t get away, and she punched him so hard in the face that even _she_ started seeing stars. The vampire let go of her, stumbling back, and she swung the machete hard, taking his head off in one easy slice, her teeth clenched together, her hands gripping her blades tight in her anger.

She turned to face her dad, standing casually over the vampire bodies, and she said, “I could have handled this on my own.”

“ _You’re_ supposed to be at Stephanie’s,” her father growled, his eyes flashing, and she stared him down defiantly as he started for her, not stopping until he was just close enough to tower over her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Grace replied through her teeth, tucking the machetes away so she could cross her arms over her chest, squaring her shoulders as she faced off the man. “I wouldn’t feel the need to act out if you didn’t keep treating me like I’m a child.”

“You wouldn’t be rebelling if you _weren’t_ a child,” her father pointed out, scowling. “You could have just asked me to go on this hunt with you.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“Apparently, you do.” Her father’s eyes grew dark. “I know about the other hunts, and I’m pissed. We are _both_ pissed. You know better than this, Grace—we are just trying to keep you safe.”

“I don’t need you to!” she yelled, throwing her arms up. “I can make my own decisions, Dad!”

“Well good for you!” he shouted back, and she automatically flinched—there was something terrifying about when her father raised his voice. Not that he would hurt her—he never would, never in a thousand years—but it animated his features in a terrifying way. He suddenly became fierce, vicious, and it was when Dean Winchester was angry that Grace knew exactly why the monsters were so scared of him. Her father gestured wildly as he continued, “I didn’t want you to become this person, Grace! I’ve told you from the beginning that a life of a hunter isn’t safe, and that we want more for you than an early grave! If I hadn’t been here, you could have _died_ , and how do you think we would have felt, home thinking that you’re somewhere safe, when you’re actually being torn apart by a coven of fucking vampires?”

She flinched, her anger dissipating, folding in on herself, and she tucked her arms around herself tightly when she muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“Get in the car,” he growled, turning and storming away, and she followed him dutifully, grimacing, waiting for him to turn his attention back on her, but it never happened. He waited until she was carefully closing the Impala’s door before he hit the engine and they flew through the night, and it barely felt like the tires were touching the pavement.

Her dad rarely yelled at her, rarely yelled ever really, but even then it really wasn’t until he didn’t turn on any music in the car that she knew she was in a hell of a lot of trouble.

When he pulled up in front of their home thirty minutes later, the dust under the tires didn’t even have the chance to settle before he told her slowly, measuredly, his hands still gripping the steering wheel, “Go to your room. We’ll talk later.”

She grimaced but did as she was told, closing the door of the Impala softly before taking to the steps of the house, edging open the front door and slipping inside, all of this a walk of shame. She should have known her other father would be waiting in the front room for her, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes cutting through her the moment she was in sight.

Grace was always bumping heads with Dean, but the moment Castiel stepped up to the helm to set the record straight, she always felt like the world’s biggest asshole.

For a second, Castiel only watched her with those bright blue eyes, eyes she knew had seen Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and could definitely figure out the thoughts of a teenage girl if he tried hard enough. She froze, waiting for him to say something, frozen like a frightened animal not sure if running would be the catalyst to send the predator after it or not, and it felt like she stood like that for a million years before Castiel took a deep breath.

And he smiled at her.

She knew immediately that she was forgiven.

She smiled sheepishly to her father, and he crossed the room to kiss her on the forehead, pulling away to nod to the stairs and send her a wink. She paused there, his hand on her face, and she closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, always only needing a few words with Castiel, and he just shook his head at her, the love and fondness and forgiveness on his face enough to send the guilt in her stomach into the only thing she could think about.

“As long as you’re okay, Grace,” Castiel said, his mantra since the beginning of her hunting training, and he ran a hand over her hair from the top of her head down her back, his eyes always looking at her like she was a wonder of the world.

She felt the tears and shame choking her as she nodded, and she threw her arms around him for a moment, breathing in his smell of book pages and the electric air of a lightning storm. She said nothing else as she pulled away and then took to the stairs, taking two at a time, and she spun into her room with the ease of someone who had lived in the same house their entire life.

Grace threw off her weapons and cleaned the small wound on her arm before she face-planted onto the bed, closing her eyes and hugging the covers tightly to her chest, the silence of the house lulling her into a restless sleep.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

“She could have died!” Dean argued, throwing out his arms. “If I hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened to her!”

“I know that you’re upset with her,” Castiel told him slowly, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm, squeezing. “I’m worried about her espionage, as well, but we’re doing no good being angry about it.”

Dean wanted to shake off his hand, wanted to yell. No _good_ being angry—he was _angry_ , damn it, angry that Grace, no matter how many times he tries to tell her, keeps going down the same dangerous path! Dean wanted to yell, wanted to throw things and act like a child, but one look into Castiel’s eyes and he was a goner for all of that pacifistic shit he always preaches when it comes to raising a kid, and Dean groaned in defeat as he slumped down onto the sofa, reaching up and covering his face with his hands.

He waited until Cas settled down next to him, a constant warm presence at his side, before he whispered, “I just don’t want something to happen to her.”

“I know that,” Cas assured him, reaching up to brush his hand gently through Dean’s hair, and Dean’s eyes slid closed. “I understand why you are so frustrated—but getting angry at her is only going to make her lash out more. I’ve taken notice that most teenagers act this way.”

Dean remembered very much so about being eighteen—about falling into his father’s rules, taking care of his brother, hunting because it was the only thing he thought that he could do to survive. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of leaving it all behind, more than once, but he always knew that he would never, that it would be a hopeless endeavor. But Grace had everything going for her. She had a scholarship to fucking _Stanford_ like her nerdy uncle, she had a home that wasn’t a Chevy Impala, and she had a family that she could always count on. Dean was only so upset with her because she had everything he would have ever wanted at that age, but she wanted to be the person that he _didn’t_ want to be when he was eighteen.

He just didn’t understand.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to her,” Dean muttered helplessly, hoping his hands would muffle his words but Cas could always hear him somehow. “I’ve buried too many people I cared about, and I don’t want her to be next.”

Cas’s hand was still threaded through Dean’s hair, so he felt it when he flinched. Dean reached out and blindly grabbed for Cas’s waist, tugging him closer and turning his face into his shoulder, breathing in the familiar smell that he knew he would never feel at home without. Cas wound his arms around Dean’s shoulders, leaning his head against his, and Dean could breathe again.

“I think we are all over having to bury our friends,” Cas whispered into his hair, “but there’s a better way to tell Grace that than to rage about it.”

“I know,” Dean groaned, half-annoyed, because Cas was somehow always judge and jury to how Dean made his decisions.

“Grace had to grow up with stories about how we fought demons and how we saved the world,” Cas pointed out softly, “so maybe she can’t help but to think that she has to give back to the world as much as we put into it. Maybe she sees hunting as something heroic.”

“She doesn’t deserve that kind of life,” Dean said, and he felt Cas shrug underneath of him.

“Grace will deserve only what she thinks she deserves, whether we think she’s right or not.”

“So you’re fully happy with letting her go out and hunt wendigos and live out of the trunk of her car and sleep in seedy motels and eat terrible diner food?”

“I never said I was happy with it. I just want _Grace_ to be happy—and you have to admit that you were happy all of those years you spent hunting with your brother.”

“Yeah, and then we broke the world.”

“Common mistake,” Cas kidded, and Dean rolled his eyes, lifting his head up off of Cas’s shoulder.

“I’m starting to think that she’s learning to hate me,” Dean confessed his soul slowly, staring at Cas’s neck to avoid those eyes. Dean reached up and tangled his hand in Cas’s shirt. “She—sometimes, the way she looks at me—I’m reminded of the way I used to look at my dad, and I don’t want to be that.”

“You are not your father, Dean,” Cas said resolutely, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look up into his eyes, “and Grace doesn’t hate you. It’s so far from that. I think she just believes you to be disappointed in her. You’re both terrible with communication.”

Dean didn’t say anything. He knew he was terrible with speaking his mind—Cas was the only one he could talk to, usually, and even then it took a long time for him to come around—and he was afraid that sitting down and talking to Grace would leave them both having said things that they didn’t mean, because she had inherited that from him as well. After a long break of silence, Dean sighed.

“I knew we should have made you the biological,” Dean muttered, frowning. “She would probably be a lot less of a handful.”

“That’s true,” Cas relented, “but being a Winchester isn’t a disease, Dean. It’s not a bad thing.”

It sometimes was, though. Dean didn’t know how to tell that to Cas, so he didn’t, because he didn’t know how to explain it even to himself. So they just laid there in silence for a long time, pressed up against each other and breathing in time, and Dean’s hand curled into Cas’s shirt above his heart, feeling the pulse of every beat.

And then, as expected, professional cockblock Sam Winchester had to call.

Cas smiled at Dean and kissed his temple before moving to the stairs, stretching, and Dean sighed loudly before reaching out and grabbing the phone, knowing it was his brother without even having to the look at the screen. “How goes it, Sammy?”

“Cas told me what happened with Grace earlier,” Sam came right out and said it bluntly. “How did that go?”

“About as well as you would expect it to,” Dean replied easily, shrugging although his brother couldn’t see him. “Showed up to find her taking on more vamps than she could handle, and then stepped in right as a vamp threw her around like a fucking hacky-sack. I finished off the job and then she pouted a lot.”

“Is she okay?”

“Looked like she just got a couple of scratches and the wind knocked out of her,” Dean relayed back to his brother, leaning back into the couch. “You here to tell me that I need to talk to her, too?”

“She’s your daughter, Dean,” Sam pointed out like Dean wasn’t aware. “ _Your_ daughter, specifically. She has a lot of you in her, and it shows. If you would let yourself, you would probably be the only person on the planet that ever really understands her.”

“Cas understands her.”

“That’s because he understands _you_ , which he has to, since you’re married and otherwise impossible to live with.”

“I’m not that bad.”

Sam only laughed before he continued, “Look, Dean, you’re just being a little too overprotective to a girl who has more than enough IQ to handle anything. She’s eighteen—she’s the same age as I was when _I_ left for Stanford.”

Dean got the sudden mental picture of John and Sam’s big final screaming match, and his blood ran cold. “Not helping her case, Sam.”

“What I’m trying to say is that she is old enough to handle herself, if you would just stop trying to suffocate her. You raised a great daughter, Dean, but you’re killing her with how close to home you’re trying to keep her.”

“She’s only going to get hurt if she hunts.”

“She’s only going to learn to hate you if you don’t let her decide for herself,” Sam hit right on Dean’s biggest nerve on the first chance he got, and Dean’s jaw clenched. “Just talk to her, alright?”

“I will,” Dean snapped, but he didn’t believe it for himself. “’Night, bitch.”

“Later, jerk.”

Dean rolled his eyes as he put his cell phone on the coffee table, biting back a yawn and letting his eyes slide shut, the silence of the house soothing. He used the silence to consider everything that Sam had said, and to admit to himself, no matter how much he hated to, that his little brother was right.

After the grand finale, Sam wandered back to California after helping Dean and Cas rebuild Bobby’s house to the exact same as it had been before, and Dean had been sad to see him go but knew that Sam had nothing going for him in South Dakota, and he went somewhere he never thought he would again. And it was then, when he was working as a bartender around the city of Palo Alto, that he met a young woman named Allison that he would end up marrying—a law and literature teacher at Stanford. Sam started working with some group to save abused animals and he and Allison started building up a life, and then they had a kid four years after Grace was born, Tyler, and they were still living in the same house, everything going normally for them, and Dean couldn’t be happier that his brother finally got the stable life that he ran away from him to find all of those years ago.

Without realizing it, Sam and Dean both got what they wanted out of life. Sam got his ideal with a wife and a kid and a lot of dogs in healthy-food-central California, and Dean got an angel in a trench coat and a daughter too much like him and a house that he could finally call his own. He got to be a mechanic and Cas got to be weirdly fascinated with bees, and everyone was happy.

He just didn’t expect raising a teenager to be this much of a pain in the ass.

Dean only let himself sit on the sofa for another couple of minutes before he forced himself up, not even bothering to pick up his phone as he kicked his shoes off at the door and made his way slowly up the stairs, holding back another yawn. He hesitated outside of Grace’s room—ever since she was born, since the very first day, he neurotically listened for the sound of her breathing every night—and he moved on when he heard the telltale sound, knowing he would now be able to sleep tonight.

Cas was still awake, sitting up in bed with a book open in his hands, an old classic Grace loved and had lent him, and Dean felt a surge of affection. Cas looked up and smiled as Dean flopped face-first onto the bed, pressed against Cas’s side, and Cas turned the light off and set the book aside before he laid down beside him, leaning into him. Dean leaned his head against Cas’s and just let himself breathe.

He didn’t let himself think about his terror when he saw Grace blindsided, crumpled on the ground.

He didn’t let himself think about what might happen tomorrow morning when he has to face his daughter again.

He didn’t let himself think about how much he would sacrifice to keep her from living the life he had somehow managed to escape.

He just thought about the warmth of Cas’s body and the sound of his breathing and his arms wrapping around him, and eventually the silence of the house managed to lull him into a peaceful sleep.

 

 


	2. Screaming

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

Her fathers never told her that she was grounded, but it was definitely blatant enough in the context of their come-to-Jesus talk the morning after the vampire incident that she took it to be gospel.

Grace was almost surprised with how smoothly it had gone, all things considered. When she had walked into the kitchen the next morning, everything was calm, and Dean had looked almost as terrified to see her as she was to see him, as if neither of them knew what to expect. But, with Castiel as mediator as always, they all managed to talk about her deceit calmly and rationally, and Grace walked away from the kitchen a couple of hours later feeling like the world’s biggest walking asshole.

She knew her response to their clinging was unjustified and childish. She wasn’t stupid—she had near-perfect scores in school, and she had Dean’s resourceful ability to use anything in a situation to be able to navigate it safely, not to mention that she had a bit of Castiel’s ever-present patience lingering in the back of her mind, making her a little less trigger-happy than her biological old man. She was heading off to college in a year after she took a break, already having enough college credits to be a sophomore already because she took some online courses for something to do in her boring summers, so she could look at her behavior and give her own sound, unbiased opinion that she was being a bag of dicks about this entire situation.

Her parents were holding on tight, afraid to let go, and she knew she was going about it the wrong way when she tried to get them to loosen the hold. She was being reckless, lashing out like a child, and she knew it, but she couldn’t help herself to be prone to the emotional and the overdramatic.

It was safe to say she took after Dean in that particular way.

So, in the two days following the vampire event, Grace simmered down to a still calm again. She lingered up in her room with the door and all of the windows open, soft rock humming from her stereo and her eyes either on a book or on her fingers as she thoughtlessly crocheted something that was turning out to look like a blanket. She listened through the window as Dean worked on cars, a familiar sound as soothing to her as a lullaby, and sometimes Castiel would pop in from where he was in and out, a keeper of bees up the road, and he would soundlessly offer her a sandwich and a grin like he knew that she had forgotten to eat again, and she would smile at him thankfully. And then she would grin when she would hear him go outside and do the same to Dean, and she imagined his response would have been about the same.

Grace liked to just take a couple of days to breathe sometimes. And there was no harmony like the flowing dynamic of her home.

On the second day, Grace timidly wandered down to watch Dean work for an hour, eyeing his new project with eager eyes, and the moment he noticed her, he grinned.

“What’s up, Grace?”

“That’s a ’64 Impala,” she immediately identified it, grinning. “Where did you even dig this up?”

“Estate sale for some old dude up in Minnesota a few weeks back,” Dean told her, and she nodded, remembering him making the trip because the guy had been an old car collector, and he might have had a salvageable fixer-upper. She had been asleep when he had gotten back, though—she hadn’t seen this beauty.

“She’s gonna be a beautiful one once you spruce up that engine and replace all of this,” Grace noted, gesturing at the faded body work without needing to specify. She grinned. “She’ll be fun to drive.”

“I’ll take you in a spin on her when I’m done, how about that?” Dean asked her, smirking, his eyes lit up in a way she knew all too well, and she grinned back with just as much excitement.

“I would definitely kick your ass if you didn’t,” she told him easily before skipping back into the house, and she left him behind laughing loudly, and it was a relief to her heart to know that her father definitely wasn’t mad at her about her little rebellion.

Irked, definitely, but not angry. And that was a start.

Or so she thought.

The next night changed everything.

Grace was a light sleeper. She always figured her father’s tendency to jerk awake at the slightest sound had come from runs through Hell and Purgatory and facing practically every monster native to the planet, but she could barely make it through the night without waking up to the sound of the house settling, or the rustling of a tree outside of her window. Even the littlest things, anything that could possibly send the word _danger_ running through her mind, had her springing awake, gasping for air, grasping for the knife she kept underneath of her pillow.

She was suddenly thrown back into consciousness sometime around one in the morning on the third night and, for a moment, she hadn’t the slightest idea what had woken her.

And then she heard the screaming.

“God damn it, Cas, you _know_ that’s not what I meant!” she heard Dean’s voice cut through the silence of the house, loudly, and her heart sunk so far down into her chest that she could no longer feel it beating. She threw her covers off and scrambled off of the bed, rushing silently to the door, as she heard Castiel make a strangled irritated noise before launching back, “I’m getting sick of hearing the same excuse for your behavior, Dean!”

Grace ghosted down the stairs, moving silently in the shadows until she was peaking into the living room, her hands shaking. They were standing with the big window lighting up their silhouettes like a spotlight, the moonlight the only source of light in the room. She watched as Dean threw his hands up and gripped at his hair, his face contorted in some mixture of anger and desperation.

“Just _talk_ to me!” Dean screamed at Castiel, his hands coming away to gesture madly into the air. “You’re angry at me, but I don’t know what I _did_.”

“It’s what you _always_ do!” Castiel yelled back, so uncharacteristic of him that it was like the shock of shooting yourself in the foot to hear him lose control of himself like that. Grace stared with eyes wide as Castiel took a slight step closer to Dean, and her stomach was lost somewhere under the floorboards when she realized—

Dean was still in sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt. But Castiel was fully dressed, shoes and trench coat and everything.

In his hands was a set of keys.

He was leaving.

She thought she was going to be sick as she thought: _He’s leaving us_.

Castiel was shorter than Dean, but he towered miles taller when he shouted, “You’re the most fucking stubborn man I have ever met! You’re so afraid of turning into your father, so afraid of letting go of Grace even if she can handle herself—”

“Grace is eighteen—she’s a fucking _kid_!” Dean yelled at his husband, and, to Grace, it was like watching her world crumble. “I was eighteen once, and I would have fucking _killed_ not to have my dad just _let go_ of me, to just let me do what I was _brainwashed_ to think was right—”

“She can make her own decisions, Dean! Free will—remember that? Remember what I gave up Heaven and my grace and my _family_ for?”

“You _always_ throw that back at me, no matter what we’re arguing over!”

“ _You_ always turn it back on _me_ , like this is ever _my_ fucking _fault_! Fuck you, Dean!” Cas pushed Dean away, hard, until he slammed into the wall, and Castiel stormed away from him, heading to the back door, and Grace thought she was going to be sick, but she couldn’t move, frozen in that moment, watching helplessly like she always was as the world continued to tilt on its axis. Dean’s fury doubled as Castiel moved away, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“Cas, I swear to God—”

Castiel turned sharply, his eyes lighting with hellfire. “ _What, Dean?_ You going to tell me what your dad told Sam? That if I leave, I better not come back? Is that what you’re going to tell _Grace_ the next time she tries to get free?”

It was too much. God, was it too much. Before she knew what she was happening, she was screaming.

“Stop it!” she shrieked at them, and they both jumped and whirled, their faces going from surprised to horrified as they saw her standing in the doorway, her hands clenched together, her knees shaking. “Just, _stop it_!”

Dean was so pale that he was turning green. Castiel stumbled a few steps closer, almost like he couldn’t control his movements, but he still paused right outside of Dean’s reach, like he was afraid Dean would grab him and force him to stay. She tried to take a breath, and she realized she was shaking; her face was wet with tears, although she didn’t remember starting to cry.

“ _I thought you were happy!_ ” she screamed at them, staring at her parents, suddenly so disillusioned, suddenly feeling like such a fucking _child_. “I thought—”

“Grace,” Castiel whispered, horrified, his face crumpling into an apology, but she couldn’t look at it. It made her stomach hurt, it made her heart feel like it was burning on dry ice.

“I’m tearing you apart,” she sobbed suddenly, nearly falling to her knees. She somehow managed to stay standing, even managed to stumble back when Dean moved forward, reaching for her. Her throat was choked with another sob when she said, “No, no, don’t let me be what tears you apart, I’m not worth that, no, no, no . . .”

“Grace, sweetie, no, please, I’m sorry,” Dean told her, still reaching for her, but she was afraid of him touching her, like it would burn like acid rain and promises never kept. She looked forward, staring wildly at her parents, but all she could see was the fury on their faces and the way Castiel walked toward the back door—

“Don’t leave,” she suddenly heard herself begging Castiel, her eyes wide, and he looked like she had punched him. She watched as his eyes suddenly filled with tears, his desperation overtaking every other emotion on his face, and he shook his head, moving toward her, until he was brushing against Dean’s arm, the one still held out helplessly to her, and she thought about how often she saw them happy, that she had never heard them fight like this in eighteen years, and she knew her name was in their argument too much, that _she_ was the problem, and self-loathing hit her like the first rock of her stoning. She was backing away, and she moved until her back hit the banister of the stairs, but the tears still fell when she whispered, “Please don’t leave, please don’t fight, please don’t _hate me_.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Castiel told her frantically, his eyes wide. “No, no, Grace, please, I’m not mad at you, neither of us are mad, please—”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said, and then her entire face crumpled and she whispered again, “ _I’m so sorry_.”

And then she was scrambling away from them, running up the stairs, taking two at a time. She heard them both yelling for her, heard them follow her, but she slammed the door behind her and slid down, her back against the wood, and she knew they wouldn’t come in. She heard them hesitate at the door, and she heard a familiar gruff murmur before one of them walked away slowly, down the hallway, to the master bedroom. She waited, holding her breath, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs or the closing of one of the main doors didn’t sound.

For a moment, there was nothing. And then she heard a soft breath, and she listened to a body slide down the length of her door, collapsing at the bottom much like she had, and she buried her head in her knees because she knew exactly who it was. She remembered being a little girl, scared of the dark and the closet, and Dean had held her in his arms and smirked down at her, his eyebrows raised, and told her that he would always protect her from the things that make her cry, that he would always be watching over her.

And here he was again. Protecting her from himself, the one that made her cry, sitting there in a silent vigil, looking after her the way he always had, and she had to bite the fabric of her shirt against another sob.

But, eventually, Dean got up, and he walked to the master bedroom, and she heard the door shut behind him, and the sound of Dean and Cas’s hushed voices crept up the hall. Grace, feeling like she was underwater, pushed herself onto her feet, taking a deep breath.

She stood in the middle of her room for a long time, coming to terms with what had happened. She had walked in on her parents having an explosive argument, and she was scared, and she exploded. She staggered to the closet, leaning her head against the door and breathing evenly no matter how much her aching chest pulsed for release, shoving it all down.

It had to have only been three in the morning, but Grace peeled off her pajamas and changed into her rugged clothes, the ones she fixes cars and hunts in. She struggled into a pair of old skinny jeans and a camisole and a white muscle tee, shrugging on her worn black leather jacket over it all. She grabbed her gun from the bedside drawer and tucked it into the waistband at the small of her back, grabbing the knife from under her pillow and hiding it in the inside pocket of her jacket. She hesitated for a long moment before she grabbed the angel blade from underneath of her bed, weighing it in her hands, and it took her a moment before she slid it into another slit on the inside of her jacket, specially made by her for this.

She laced up her black military-grade hiking boots with a hidden silver plate at her toes and in the heel, and she stood up straight and looked into the mirror when she was done, taking a deep breath, taking herself in.

She looked put-together, but her face told the story about how much of a mess she was.

Grace took a deep breath, still looking in the mirror.

She had wanted to look badass. She had wanted to look tough. She had wanted to look like a _Winchester_. But, to her, she always looked like a kid trapped in a teenager’s body, two seconds away from screaming, two seconds away from her own self-hatred to start bubbling over the edge.

She blew out a breath and pursed her lips at her own reflection and the room reflected behind her.

That’s when she noticed it—so small of a detail, so seemingly insignificant, but the most important thing. Her breath caught in her throat as she spotted it, and she whirled around, cold panic creeping up into her throat, knowing it could only mean one thing.

The protective Enochian runes Castiel had carved onto her wall when she was born were gone, scorched. Destroyed.

She had one moment. And, in that moment, she screamed as loud as she could, “ _Dad!_ ”

And then there were hands gripping her arms, and she was screaming as the world melted away into the sound of wings and a bright light and a loud screeching, and suddenly she was tumbling through time and space with nothing to hold onto, nothing but herself, and she was almost thankful for the moment when she finally blacked out.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

He felt like he was going to be sick.

He restlessly paced the length of the master bedroom, running his hands through his hair so many times that he was sure he was going to make himself bald, but he couldn’t stop moving. Cas sat curled in on himself on the bed, his eyes watching him, his expression sad and thoughtful. Dean hated that look on his face, the way he was holding himself—Castiel was shrinking into nothing, right before his eyes, and there was no way that Dean could hold onto him and keep him here.

He couldn’t even fucking remember what they had been arguing about.

“What have we done?” Dean asked, the words sounding wounded, and Cas flinched.

“I don’t know,” Cas confessed before burying his head in his hands. “Dean, what were we even arguing about?”

“I don’t remember,” Dean whispered, unexplainably relieved that Cas was just as flustered by the events of tonight as he was. Dean crossed to the bed and sunk down next to Cas, his hands folding helplessly into his lap. “Cas, I—”

“I know,” Cas whispered, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry too. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dean murmured, reaching out and winding his arms around Cas’s waist, tugging his body closer until he could feel his body heat, and the part of Dean that had been panicking since the moment he saw Castiel dressed and ready to walk out the door, to walk out of the life they had built together, finally soothed into a dull pounding, and he held him tighter, sure he was going to bruise him but wanting to know he was there.

Cas curled into him until they were entirely tucked into each other, their cheeks pressed together and their breath on each other’s skin, and Dean listened to his heartbeat calm just knowing Cas was there, thinking to himself how many panic attacks could have been eased in his life if he had always had Cas around.

Dean voiced the one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about, murmured, “What are we going to do about Grace?”

Cas took a long breath, threading his fingers tightly into Dean’s t-shirt. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, his voice a low rumble in his chest, that Dean could feel better than he could hear, making goose bumps raise on his skin. “With Grace—sometimes, there’s nothing you can do or say.”

“That look on her face,” Dean said, blowing out the air in his lungs, closing his eyes and seeing it every time, the tear-soaked, heartbroken expression when she screamed, _I thought that you were happy_. “Fuck . . .”

“I know,” Cas said, his voice choked. “She just needs tonight, Dean. She’ll think about it, and she’ll have figured it all out by the morning. There’s nothing we can do until she makes up her mind.”

Dean knew Cas was right—of course he was right, he was always right. Cas was like a damn mind reader when it came to their kid, and Dean knew it himself—he knew Grace enough to know this much. So he tugged Cas’s hands until they were both sliding up to the top of the bed, and Dean leaned his head against the headboard, half sitting up, while Castiel curled tightly into his chest, clinging to him like _Dean_ was the one that had been about to leave. Dean ran his fingers through Cas’s hair, not knowing how to say it, not knowing what to do. He wanted to say something so badly, but there were no words.

Cas knew the words. Like he knew exactly what Dean was thinking, he murmured softly, vulnerably, “I wasn’t actually going to leave.”

“I know,” Dean said, and he did, but hearing Cas confirm it made it so much easier to breathe, and he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, clutching the ex-angel closer. “I know.”

They laid like that for so long, in a silence of feeling grateful, of forgiveness, that Cas ended up falling asleep, still tucked up against Dean. But Dean—he had this funny feeling in his gut. Like he would miss something if he went to sleep. So he was wide awake as the numbers ticked away at the clock, holding onto a sleeping Cas and staring into the distance, thinking a lot about things that were probably toxic at the moment for him to think about but he didn’t care, and he just listened to the sound of Cas’s soft breathing, the rise and fall of his chest against Dean’s side.

It wasn’t even half past three when Grace started screaming.

Cas jerked awake, disoriented, as the sound of Grace’s voice, terrified, cut through the air, as she screamed, “ _Dad!_ ”

Dean was off of the bed in seconds, banging on her door in a moment’s notice, yelling his daughter’s name, but there was silence, and it made his stomach turn. He tried the doorknob but it felt jammed, and Cas materialized at his side as Dean kicked down the door, springing into the room unarmed, ready to tear apart anything with his bare hands that _dared_ touch his little girl.

The room was silent, and empty. Painfully empty.

“Grace?” Dean yelled, spinning around like she was hiding behind him, his panic growing worse when he realized she was nowhere to be found. He felt seasick, like the world was dipping, when he screamed, “ _Grace!_ ”

He saw it in the reflection of the mirror first. He saw it, and then he saw _Cas_ see it, and Cas was suddenly so frozen that Dean swore he might have been the same angel that threatened to throw him back into the Pit. Dean turned, knowing what he would find, knowing what it would mean, but he had to see with his own two eyes as he looked to the warding that had been protecting Grace for the entirety of her life, angelic runes that had seemed so unnecessary, but Dean had never argued.

They were scorched black. Someone had burned them right off of the wall. And Grace was gone.

“ _Angels_ ,” Cas hissed through frozen lips, everything about him cold as stone. “But—how?”

Dean didn’t know. Damn, did he not know. All he knew was that Grace was gone, that it was angels, a million frantic thoughts running through his head because _where is my daughter_ and _no no please not Grace_ , his fingers fumbling for the cell phone in his pocket before he fully realized what he was doing. He was pressing down the third key, his hands shaking violently, and he felt like he was going to pass out as he pressed the phone to his ear.

It rang once before Sam answered, sounding sleepy and concerned. “Dean?”

“Sammy,” Dean gasped, not realizing before that he was hyperventilating, but he was feeling the massive compression in his chest now. He staggered backwards, sinking down uneasily onto Grace’s bed, while Cas continued to stare at the burnt warding, his face a blank slate, his eyes burning with the wrath of angels. Cas glanced over at him at the sight of his ungraceful movement, but he still showed no emotion as Dean continued to hyperventilate from the bed, one hand grabbing at his head.

“Dean, holy shit,” Sam said, suddenly sounding completely awake, terrified. “Dean, what’s going on? What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?”

“She’s gone, Sam,” Dean choked out, his voice shaking wildly. “Grace, she’s—she’s gone. I heard her screaming—”

“Oh my god,” Sam whispered, horrified, and Dean heard the sound of Allison, her voice softly asking what was wrong, but Sam didn’t answer. “What do you _mean_ , she’s _gone_?”

“The angel warding,” Dean murmured, making a pathetic sound. “It’s burnt off. They have her. I don’t know how, but the angels have her, Sam, and I don’t—I don’t know what—”

“Breathe, Dean,” Sam reminded him, but Dean could barely hear him over the sound of his own heartbeat. “Allison—Allison, go get Ty, now. Dean? Dean, we’re heading there right now. Don’t go anywhere. Ward the house and don’t leave until we get there, you hear me? Where’s Cas?”

“He’s right here,” Dean muttered, blinking. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll stay here. Hurry, Sam.”

“I’m hurrying,” Sam assured him, sounding just as panicked, but trying not to. “I’m sure she’s okay, Dean. It’s okay. Call me if anything new happens.”

Dean made a sound that might have passed for acknowledgment before he ended the call, letting the phone drop uselessly to the ground. He blinked, suddenly not seeing Cas standing where he had just been standing, and he looked down in surprise to find that Cas had sunk to the floor, staring at his hands. Dean slowly moved until he was kneeling next to him, close enough that their arms brushed, and it took Cas a long moment before he said anything.

“Remember that time, when Grace was three, when we lost her at the supermarket?” Cas asked him, sounding lost, but a fond smile was turning up at the corners of his mouth, the ghost of happiness. “She was always wandering off, and we didn’t see her sneak away, and it felt like I was drinking acid when she was there and then she was gone again. It felt like my heart was going to stop, I was so terrified—I had never seen you so frantic—and then we found her in the cereal aisle, sitting in a giant mound of Cocoa Puffs.”

Dean let out a choked laugh at the memory, his eyes stinging with tears as Cas whispered, “It feels like that feeling, like my heart is stopping. But so much worse. This—this is what it feels like to die.”

Dean knew exactly what he was saying. He knew it right to his core, but he didn’t know what to say, how to tell him the assurances that were at the tip of his tongue, because they were words that he didn’t believe, and Cas knew that. Cas wouldn’t want Dean to lie to him, even if it was to make him feel better.

So he did the only thing he could do and just sat there with him, two terrified parents in too much shock to wonder how creatures that had been locked into Heaven twenty-some years prior were suddenly jail breaking, and why they would take Grace. They just sat there, asking all of their questions wordlessly into the silence, but there were no answers, and all Dean could hear was the sound of his daughter screaming for them to save her, and the silence of them being too late.


	3. Reckoning

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

The world was a whirlwind of images and sounds. It was over-stimulating. Grace could feel the pressure building in her head, the flashes blinding her eyes, and she wanted to scream but she felt suspended in nothing, not even in control of her own body. She wanted to shut her eyes, but she could not. She wanted to fight it, but she couldn’t move.

Her head was going to explode. Her ears were bleeding.

Castiel had told her more than once that angels overpowered humans, but she had never known their graces, their power, could be so great and terrible.

The moment Grace thought it would all be over, that her human body wouldn’t be able to handle anymore, it all suddenly stopped, and she was stumbling after a hard impact into the ground, trying to stay on her feet. She reached up and clapped her hands over her ears, gasping in air desperately, spinning wildly around as her headache was suddenly gone, the only remembrance of pain in the blood that was still wet on her ears, staining her fingers.

She breathed out heavily, blinking, and everything was clear, everything was fine. Everything was still.

“Grace,” she heard a familiar voice say, and she turned so quickly she nearly lost her balance, her eyes wide as she heard him laugh and say again, “ _Perfect_ , Grace.”

She was standing on the edge of the kitchen, hovering at the back door. The kitchen table was moved out of the way, pressed against the far wall, and there was a small radio sitting on top of it, playing a soft classical song. Dean was sitting next to the table, trying to smother a smile to save his machismo and failing, as Castiel stood with a small child, probably about five—Grace realized with a sudden jolt in her stomach that it was _her_ —and they were dancing.

She stared at the scene, her eyes wide, as Castiel smiled down at her fondly, twirling her around, and small-Grace’s peels of laughter were loud and happy, echoing up to the ceiling.

This was when her father had taught her how to dance. She remembered it—she was five, and she wanted to be a princess like she saw in movies, and her ex-angelic father took it upon himself (joking to Grace later that Dean would rather hunt a rugaru in a dress than admit he knew how to dance) to teach her how to dance at a ball. She remembered it through the eyes of the little girl balancing on her father’s feet, giggling at the ridiculous moves he was teaching her to make her laugh—and now she was watching it, a third party observer, a fly on the wall.

A pulse of warm fondness pressed against her ribs as Castiel dipped her memory-self, the little girl smiling around missing teeth, and she saw Dean lose his battle with a smile as a giant, goofy grin spread over his face, his eyes warm.

She felt a small smile curve onto her lips as she watched the scene in front of her, a happy family in happy times, a little girl in a puffy dress and her awkward father trying to be human enough for her, and Grace felt like the warmth of the scene would be enough to strangle her.

No. No, this was wrong.

This was the wrong perspective. This was—this wasn’t her hallucinating, this wasn’t a dream. She could smell oil grease and honey and the smell of whatever food they must have eaten for dinner that night lingering in the air. She could see things that she hadn’t noticed when she was a child—like the way Dean watched them, like how Castiel would look up every so often and smile embarrassingly at him and Dean would grin wider, teasingly but fondly. These were things she shouldn’t know, things she hadn’t been able to see.

She thought about how Dean had told her about the time angels had sent him forwards and backwards through time, and she suddenly felt nauseous, wondering what kind of paradox they must have sent her tumbling through.

Her thoughts and the scene in front of her were suddenly disrupted by an unexpected light shining through the window, the sound of terrible screeching accompanying it as it swiped back and forth through the room, like it was searching for someone, and Grace realized with a dip in her stomach that she was the only thing here out of place. She looked quickly at the scene, at how the characters in that moment hadn’t notice a thing even though windows were shattering and the world was shaking, and Grace reached backwards and blindly tugged open the back door the moment the light turned to her, blinding her, and she tumbled backwards through it, falling into open air.

She landed on her feet in the backyard, her memory self five years older, the nighttime of the last memory overtaken with the middle of the day in a hot South Dakota summer. Memory-Grace was standing next to Dean at the back of the yard behind the barn, where he had a small table set up with bottles standing on the top, at the edge. Dean hovered behind her as ten-year-old-Grace held a BB gun the way he had taught her, his hands hovering by her shoulders like he was afraid just holding the airsoft rifle was going to shatter her, and she saw him take a deep breath before he said, his voice cheerful and casual despite his body language, “See how many you can hit there, Grace.”

This was where her hunting training began. It started with this, and that night was when her parents had made the executive decision to actually educate her in it. Grace paused, watching the scene curiously, not distinctly remembering this part even though she knew from her fathers that this was where it all started.

Then-Grace lifted the BB gun into place, her form perfect, and she started firing.

Grace and her then-dads watched, stunned, as she hit every single one of the targets in one try.

“ _Awesome_ , Grace!” Dean praised her, ruffling her hair, but she saw something she hadn’t seen at the time—Dean glanced back at Cas, a look of horror making his face pale, and Castiel looked back at him with a blank expression of unease.

The broken shards of the bottles started to shake on the table, the rumble that came with the light returning, warning her this time, and she immediately turned on her heel and sprinted for cover, rounding the corner of the barn and throwing herself through the open door—

And she was back in the kitchen again.

Dean was cooking, laughing, and she was eleven at best, wearing a yellow sundress in the middle of springtime, and she was dancing and twirling girly to the tune of AC/DC blaring from the old boom box in the kitchen. Then-Grace was pulling her best retired ballet moves, and it was making her father laugh harder so she kept at it, a big grin on her face, and Castiel was laughing from the living room where he was buried in a book, his grin brightening up the entire world as he watched them.

Grace couldn’t stop—she was afraid what would happen if she lingered for too long, couldn’t even take the time to wonder where in the world she _was_ —so she kept running, straight out the front door, only to appear in the living room late at night, three years old and curled in Castiel’s lap, wearing a pair of footie pajamas. He looked exhausted, but that didn’t stop him from holding her close and murmuring stories to get her to fall asleep, stories of the Winchester Gospel and how her fathers fought off the world, and how Castiel himself had saved the righteous man, and she remembered being reverent, intrigued, and later stunned silent when she found out all of the stories were true.

She could remember Castiel’s whispered mournful words over the friends that they had lost, the family that had fallen, but he told her about hope, too, about saving the world, and about what ended it all—how the Winchesters tied shut the doors of Heaven and Hell, and how the world kept spinning again, and it was like they could finally breathe.

She hesitated here, in this place. She knew full well why she had to run, why she couldn’t stay, but she hesitated, her eyes welling up with tears.

Everywhere else she had been, those were great memories. Dancing with her dads, watching them be proud of her—what kid didn’t treasure those memories? But these—they were so much more personal. They meant the world to her. Her life revolved around these stories, these monsters and these fights, these successes and these defeats. Her whole world was built on top of them, each and every single one of them, and she looked at Castiel whispering them softly into her hair as her three-year-old eyes began to droop, sleepy, she wished more than she could stomach how much she would love to be back in a time where it was all that easy.

They had told the truth to her in bedtime stories when she wouldn’t understand. They told her the truth about monsters when she was learning long division, and, ever since then, she knew her father and her uncle for what they are—heroes.

It was then that she strived to do the good that they had. That, despite any of the dark, any of the bad, she wanted to be where they are at when she is their age—she wanted to have protected people, to have saved them. She wanted to be the best of the business, the one who saved the world.

She learned young that the name Winchester came with many connotations, and she wanted to bring out the best of them, to wipe the record clean and start over, to make it better. She wanted to hunt, and she wanted to be the ideal. She wanted to live up to the legacy that came before her.

Her dads hadn’t meant for it to happen, but it was then she decided what she wanted to be—long before they thought she could make that kind of decision, long before Dean had let her shoot that BB gun in the backyard and had decided to teach her hand-to-hand combat and knives. It was there, in the stories that Castiel used to tell her when she couldn’t sleep, that she knew where she wanted to go and where she had to be. It was then that she took to glorifying her parents, because damn did they deserve better than they got.

Her throat was choked with tears, but Grace couldn’t let herself cry. She looked at her little body curled around her father, seeking his protection, and she suddenly wished more than anything that she was home.

And then the light found her, and she was running again.

The light was frantically cutting through the air behind her as she ran out the front door, but this time she kept going, the middle of the day, and she somehow knew it was years later. She tore up the rocky road to her home, dust and dirt invading her lungs and making her want to cough but she powered by, running in the shoulder as she passed the Impala up the way, her past-self of three years ago sitting in the driver’s seat, looking terrified, as Dean, looking equally as terrified, told her, “Okay, Grace, now _softly_ press the gas— _not that much, Grace!_ ”

She was running, following the road, feeling the ground shaking below her, when she was suddenly grabbed, and she cried out and kicked as a figure pulled her hard into a sudden covering of trees that shouldn’t be there. She struggled against the man’s hold, the sight of him wearing some fucking goofy Nacho Libre mask sending her into both disbelief of the idiocy and a strike of fear because why would he have to cover his face, and she watched him paint a sigil she had never seen before onto the door of a shed that hadn’t been there moments ago.

She barely remembered to put up a fight before he tugged her again, sending them through the doorway, and she stumbled as he let her go, turning around and slamming the door behind him. He tugged off the mask with one hand, grinning, and she didn’t even bother to take a look at the place around her, and she didn’t bother to take a moment to marvel that the man actually had a _mullet_.

He opened his mouth, obviously to speak to her, but she was faster.

She roundhouse kicked him in the face, and he was suddenly on the ground, groaning loudly as blood poured out of his noise.

“Damn,” he groaned, “you’re not in a good mood.”

She scowled, entirely not in the mood for this, and she sensed it before she heard it. She grabbed the gun from her waistband—absolutely relieved that all of her weapons had survived whatever the hell funhouse she was going through right now—and she snapped off the safety, turning the gun on the individuals behind her, growling, “Don’t come near me.”

“Whoa,” the woman told her, early forties, with chestnut color hair and dark eyes, putting her hands up. “No need to shoot, kiddo, we’re the good guys here.”

“Somehow, I’m not entirely convinced,” Grace replied unkindly.

She covered her back right so well her dad would have been proud when the man from the floor moved up to disarm her from behind—she whirled around and pistol-whipped him hard, turning the gun back on the approaching individuals, the woman and an early-twenties-looking Asian kid, as Mullet slumped back to the ground, letting out a louder pained groan.

“I’m tapping out,” he groaned, reaching up a hand to his head, still writhing behind her on the floor. “She’s vicious. You guys deal with her.”

“I just want to know what is going on,” Grace told them, not lowering her weapon, flicking it between the two of them. A woman came out from behind the bar, a young adult with blonde hair and big brown eyes, and her eyes widened when she saw Grace holding a gun but she didn’t say anything, just didn’t move, like a proper hostage. Grace looked between all of them, frenzied fear choking her, as she pleaded, “Can someone tell me what the _hell_ is going on?”

“The gun ain’t necessary, princess,” a gruff voice told her, walking out from a partition between the walls—Grace was seeing now that this place was nothing but a dingy bar, with pool tables and shooting games and the whole deal—and the man was coming from a room that seemed to hold a couple of pool tables, his hands held up in surrender, his eyes tough but honest as he stared her down. He was wearing a dirty cap and ratty clothing, but not ratty like dirty, ratty like they were old and well-worn, and he looked like he could take on a cage fight with a bear and come out of it with the bear’s head on a spike. But, still, when he offered her an imploring look, he looked like he was the kind of guy that would take in a homeless kitten because it was too cute to keep outside. When Grace didn’t move, he said to her calmly, “We won’t be hurtin’ you here—we’ve got your answer, and you’ve got some answers for us, I think.”

Grace looked at the man, _really_ looked at him, and it hit her like a frying pan to the jaw. She blinked rapidly, like she was expecting him to disappear, when she asked, “Who are you?”

“Introductions after you’ve relaxed that arm,” he said, and she suddenly was so sure. But she didn’t move.

The man from the ground groaned again. “I found her running the Axis Mundi, an angel on her heels. She’s definitely the one we’re supposed to be looking for—definitely the companythe brothers would keep.”

“Wait,” Grace said, the shock cold. “Did you just say _Axis Mundi_? But the Axis Mundi is in _Heaven_.”

“Oh boy,” the woman muttered, her voice pitying. “Here we go.”

“I’m in _Heaven_?” Grace demanded, feeling cold, feeling impossible, and her gaze cut back to the man, eyes widening. “If I’m in Heaven . . . Then you _are_ Bobby Singer, aren’t you?”

He looked more shocked than she felt when he slowly nodded, and Grace glanced around the place, whispers from her father in the dark filling in the details, filling in the names, and her hands were suddenly shaking so hard that holding the gun was a forgotten dream, and she clicked back on the safety moments before it clattered loudly to the floor as she wobbled uneasily. She looked around at the faces, all watching her with sadness and pity, and she looked back at them, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to put all of this together in a way that worked.

She should have known. She should have known, from the first memory, remembering Castiel telling her of the joy, remembering Dean telling her about the bittersweet rerun of his life’s greatest hits, and she suddenly felt like she was going to pass out, but she refused, so she just looked around at everyone, breathing evenly, and steeled herself as she whispered, “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

But they didn’t have to answer. She already knew.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Time didn’t mean much to him anymore.

He didn’t have any idea the number of hours that went by from the time that Grace disappeared to when Sam pulled up in his shitty hybrid in front of the house. Cas seemed slightly more in control of himself, but only mechanically—he had been the one forcing the both of them to eat something, to sleep, even if neither of them actually fell asleep, and he kept them going through the motions. Cas had flipped through some books, but they were helpless in their old age—their contacts were gone, and they had no one other than Sam and Allison to hold up the hunting front with them. And the angels being back in the game—that wasn’t something a book could explain.

They were sitting on the stairs of the front porch when Sam pulled up, jumping out of the car the moment the engine cut, his eyes tired and his shoulder-length hippie hair messy. Allison looked just as thrown together, a beautiful woman with the curliest dark hair in the world, her hair standing up even taller as they closed the space between them, and Dean blinked when he realized Sam had been speaking to him.

“Dean?” Sam asked worriedly, snapping his fingers in front of Dean’s face when he was close enough, and Dean blinked, snapping out of it, looking way too far up at his gargantuan little brother, taking in his panicked expression when he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Dean asked, his voice deeper than he expected, and Sam flinched. Allison shot them a sad look before she gestured for them to get up, grabbing Cas by the sleeve and tugging at him until he was on his feet.

“Let’s go inside, okay?” she asked softly, her eyes kind, as she looked between them. “You both look like you’re about to go into shock, and you could both probably use a cold glass of water.”

Sam nodded in agreement, yanking Dean up with one handful of his shirt, making Dean stumble onto his feet. He pushed his brother away from him, muttering sourly how he didn’t have to have them look after him like he’s a fucking toddler, but he followed Allison and Cas into the house anyway, Sam closing and locking the front door behind them. They waited until they were settled down around the kitchen table, Allison and Sam with coffees and Dean and Cas with water they probably wouldn’t drink, before the inquisition began.

“Tell us everything that happened, from the beginning,” Sam urged his brother slowly, putting on his charity eyes, the ones he always used to give victims when they worked cases, and the sour feeling in Dean’s stomach was snapping him back into his own skin, pulling him into his sense of mind like he had been underwater, and he took a slow sip of water, feeling like he was slowly dying.

Cas still looked blank, like an angel again, so Dean told them.

He told them about the fight they had, about how Grace had walked in on it and had gotten upset and yelled at them, and how she thought it was her fault. Dean told them how she locked herself up in her room, like she tended to do when she was upset, so they went back to their room to wait it out until the morning. Dean’s voice choked up when he told Sam about hearing her scream, about kicking her door down, and how nothing had been different in her room except for the burnt sigils. Sam had known of them, had been aware that they were there, but he still asked, “What exactly did it say?”

“It wasn’t warding, necessarily,” Cas confessed miserably, looking defeated, like he should have known better nineteen years ago when they were expecting, when everything was finally peaceful and over. “It was a—a curse, I suppose, would be the best way to put it. With the symbols, if an angel touched Grace, it would have sent them back into Heaven and locked them away from her.”

“So they got in when she wasn’t there and burnt it off,” Sam said sadly, nodding slowly, like it all made sense, but all four of them were at a loss, because _none_ of this made sense. “Has there been weird activity around here?”

“No,” Dean said. “Just some vampires. The ones Grace took care of.”

“Nothing angelic,” Cas echoed surely. “I would have noticed. I’ve—I’ve been watching, still.”

“We’ll find her, guys,” Allison told them suddenly, her eyes determined, her body language screaming confidence and vengeance. “If we know anything about Grace, it’s that she’ll fight until her hands are bloody before she lets someone walk all over her. She’ll be giving those winged bastards hell wherever they’ve planted her. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she managed to get away from them.”

“But how are the angels back?” Dean demanded, looking to Sam this time, and Sam looked just as lost as he was. Sam shook his head.

“There wasn’t a time seal on the spell, so I have no idea if it was that or something else,” Sam told him, frowning. “We’ll have to find someone who’ll know about it. But it’s safe to say that if the angels are out, so are the demons. The spell tied the two together.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” Dean muttered, groaning as he put his head in his hands, his mind spinning around all of the terrible things the angels could be doing to his daughter, and he felt so, so sick. “Where’s Tyler?”

“My sister’s,” Allison told him softly, like she heard Dean’s pain at remembering how close the cousins have always been, silent protectors over each other since they were kids, even though Grace was four years Ty’s senior. “He’s warding it for everything while he’s there. He’ll help the best he can.”

Dean looked up at them through his hands, feeling a sharp stab of relief that they were there. Sam was looking older, a little more worn, but it had only been a few months since they had been here for Grace’s graduation. It punched him again, thinking about her, thinking about everything terrible, and he tried to push it into the back of his mind, tried to rearrange his priorities into what he needed to do to save her before he started getting sad, and he breathed evenly.

Allison grinned at him, seeing his internal struggle. Allison was Grace’s height, small but in no way not strong, also like Grace—they hid their fierceness so that the monsters couldn’t see, but they could both rip monster heads off with their bare hands if they wanted to. When they were all together, Allison was typically confused as being Grace’s mother, but it was actually Allison’s sister Adrianna that had carried Grace. They hadn’t even realized the connection until later, and then it was kismet.

Dean liked Allison. She was spunky and fearless and she was always the nicest person on the planet. But she was also the one that taught Grace how to throw knives, and the one that Dean had seen set an entire house of vampires on fire without even blinking, a smile on her face.

If there was anyone he trusted right now to look for Grace, it was Sam and Allison. With them looking for her, with them helping him and Cas out, Dean had a little more hope that they would actually be able to figure something out in time.

They would at least be able to keep them sane, and that was something to be grateful for in and of itself.

“Alright,” Dean said, pushing away from the table and standing. “Looks like we’ve got some winged douchebags to look for. We should check to see if they’ve showed signs anywhere else around the globe that we might not have seen, and we should check into what might have been strong enough to blow the Heaven and Hell gates open. If we at least know who to talk to, we might be able to get them to tell us where Grace is, but until then we would just be chasing our tails. Anyone have a preference?”

“Sam and I will take to the books,” Allison volunteered them, and Sam nodded in agreement. “You two start looking for weird weather patterns and all that shit. And Dean—you should probably put on some more coffee. We’re all gonna need it.”

“Right,” Dean murmured in agreement, already feeling his energy level dropping considerably as the shock eased slightly from Grace’s disappearance, and Allison and Sam moved for the living room, talking amongst themselves about what books they might be able to find what in. Cas slowly stood up, his fingertips on the table like they were the only thing holding him up, and he hooked his head to look at Dean, his eyes shining with determination.

“You’re right,” Cas said. “We need to get moving.”

“Something wicked this way comes, Cas,” Dean replied, hooking one corner of his mouth up into a halfhearted smirk. “Are you ready for it?”

“Probably not,” Cas answered honestly, still after twenty-some years not quite grasping rhetorical questions, but he took a deep breath. “But we need to get Grace back, and I’m ready to do anything for that.”

“Me too,” Dean whispered, turning so that Cas couldn’t see the hopelessness Dean was sure showed on his face, closing his eyes. “Yeah, Cas—me too.”

The next three hours passed in silence.


	4. Understanding

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“How did you know to find me?” Grace demanded, clenching her fists tightly to distract her, turning to look at Bobby Singer, a man she never thought she would meet, a man she almost didn’t know how to talk to. This was the man who was the Winchester brothers’ true father, the one that really took care of them and the one that saved them and they looked up to. She lived in a remake of his house—her dad ran a business out of the remains of his garage and named it Singer Auto after him. Bobby Singer was a hero whose last breath was spent smiling at his adopted sons, a hero who ran from a reaper to give them numbers that would end up saving the world.

Grace unsteadily reached down and picked up her gun, tucking it back into her jeans. Everyone that haunted Dean Winchester’s past watched her move cautiously, as if expecting her to attack, but the fight had been drained out of Grace. She offered a hand to the man still laying on the floor, looking like she had ran him over a couple of times instead of just having clocked him in the head twice, and he took it suspiciously, letting her help him up. He muttered a slightly sardonic thank you before shuffling off past Bobby and the others and turned at the partition, as if he was just going to flop down on one of the pool tables. Remembering he had done just as such in the Winchester Gospel, Grace kept her sarcastic response to herself, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets.

“I’m not going to attack you, if that’s what you think,” she announced to the room, smiling teasingly. “Only was until I pieced everything together—but I think I got all of your names now.”

“How’s that?” the woman, Ellen Harvelle, demanded of her, narrowing her eyes. Grace smiled easily, as charming as Dean and as patient as Castiel—the thought of her dads stung, but she pushed it to the back of her mind for now.

“The Winchester Gospel, or those stupid ass Carver Edlund books, is a pretty tale known by all hunters now, unlike how it was back in the day,” Grace informed them, shrugging, tiptoeing around the truth carefully. “You should see the television show—it’s a thing of beauty, I’ll tell you that.”

“Wait, what?” Ellen demanded sharply, sounding shocked, but Bobby just shook his head at both of them, his eyes watching Grace carefully, like she was a dangerous animal.

“I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here,” Bobby mediated, still watching her like a hawk. “Got a name, girl?”

“It’s Grace.”

“Last name?”

“Starkey,” she responded easily, wincing because of all musical performers, she went for the drummer of the _Beatles_ , but no one else seemed to notice, and she thanked the lord for stage names. “So, any of you going to answer my question?”

“How about you sit down before we get to talkin’?” Bobby offered her, sighing as he gestured at one of the tables, the others watching his movements like he solely called the shots, but Grace knew better of all their personalities—so was this a trick, to see if she immediately dove for the neck of the leader? She couldn’t tell, and she wasn’t going to attack any of them anyway, so she meandered behind Bobby to the table and took her seat across from him, leaning forward eagerly. The others took stools at the bar and turned so that they could see them, more curious than cautious at this point. Even Mullet rolled over on his pool table and squinted at them.

“You know what angel radio is?” Bobby asked her, starting his story abruptly, and continuing once she had nodded. “It’s been offline for a long time now, for seemingly no reason. And then, only a couple of hours ago, it suddenly turned on, and there was all of this bad sound, but the only word we could make out was _‘Winchester’_. And then we heard a report saying that the ‘topic of interest’ had been dropped down into Heaven, so we figured that we should probably duck out and rescue you. Didn’t know what we were expecting, though—definitely not some sixteen year old girl.”

“Eighteen,” Grace corrected, frowning, actually offended. “What out of all that made you want to nab me?”

“Curious,” Bobby said, “and the repeating _Winchester_ thing made our hackles raise a bit. Everyone in here fought and died with a Winchester.”

“Yeah,” Grace said, “I know.”

She leaned back in her chair, running her hands restlessly against her thighs. Bobby squinted at her. “What you mean by that?”

“I grew up hearing all of those stories,” Grace told them, shrugging. “The Roadhouse in Nebraska and the Harvelles, genius Ash, adopted daddy Singer, even prophet extraordinaire and AP student Kevin Tran.” She leaned her head back so the group at the bar could see the smirk she sent their way. “Oh, yeah, I know all about you guys. You all make for some tragic characters.”

“We’re all here because the Winchesters got us killed,” Kevin told her, narrowing his eyes at her, but he seemed a little entertained by her antics. “What’s your excuse? They get you killed too?”

“Hmm,” she said. “Something like that.”

They didn’t ask, and she wasn’t about to tell, so they left it at that. She was still having a bit of an issue wrapping her head around being dead, expecting herself to be panicking a little more, but if she learned one thing about her father’s past, it was that it was a little harder to kill a Winchester than a normal human, and she still had a few arguments.

“In response to what you said about angel radio,” Grace said, turning back to Bobby. “Do you guys have a sense of time up here?”

“Not since the shut-down, really,” Bobby told her, frowning. “We got something about gates being closed, and then it cut out, and it’s been peace and quiet until today. You know somethin’ we don’t know?”

And she suddenly felt so bad for them, all of them, because they had no idea. They had no view of the world below them from where they were up here, and they had no idea of the peace from the paranormal she had grown up in.

She figured she might as well just rip the band-aide off, so she announced calmly, “The gates to Heaven and Hell were closed about twenty-two years ago.”

The shock that washed over Bobby’s face was enough to tell her that they had no idea about the time passing. His hands curled into fists on top of the table and the peanut gallery behind them was completely silent.

“The Winchesters figured out how to seal the gates shut,” she explained slowly, watching Bobby closely. “Until this morning, everything was both angel- and demon-free. And before you ask, the Winchester brothers are still alive and well. And domestic. Kids, white picket fence, all that fun stuff. They’re legends.”

Bobby looked like he was going to pass out, but not necessarily in a bad way. He had missed it, and she thought that maybe this was the first time he had really realized that he had _missed it_. The Winchesters had taken on the world, had conquered Heaven and Hell, but he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been able to help them.

But he had to be proud, because they had done it all by themselves. They had their ups and downs—a significant number of downs—but _they did it_.

Grace couldn’t think of something a father would be more proud of.

Bobby cleared his throat noisily before he asked, “So what could have opened the gates again?”

“Realistically? Nothing,” Grace replied. “Something stronger than superglue was keeping those doors closed. The fact that they opened doesn’t look good for our friends back down on the surface.”

“Who exactly are you?” Jo Harvelle demanded, leaning toward her above the bar, her eyes hooded with distrust. Grace smiled at her easily, turning on the full Winchester charm.

“A hunter,” she replied easily. “Not fulltime, but I’m working on it with the parental units. Other than that, I’m a proper genius, a Sagittarius, and I’m all for saving rock and roll.”

She gave them all her best shit-eating grin. She was pretty sure she saw Ellen’s eye twitch.

She leaned back into her chair and whistled before she added, “Oh, and I’m not dead.”

“There are only so many times we can go over this,” Bobby told her patiently, but he was obviously a little tired out by all of this unexpected information, so she couldn’t help but to think withholding the I’m-actually-a-Winchester bomb was probably for the best, at least for the time being. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t dead or an angel that’s been in Heaven, princess, so you should probably start adjusting.”

“It’s not so bad,” Jo piped up, shrugging. “You basically get to do whatever you want _when_ ever you want.”

Grace shook her head. “No, but see, fact says I’m not dead. Would you like to hear?”

“Enlighten me,” Bobby grated out sarcastically, and Grace laughed.

“When I dropped down, my ears were bleeding,” she told them. “My sources told me that there is nothing like that in Heaven, not for the souls—they aren’t affected by the sound of angels. Secondly, I doubt that I would actually have functional weapons on my person. The clothes you’re wearing are just personal illusions, but mine are the real deal. That, and I’m pretty sure any angel with a brain would have taken this off of me if my soul was hanging onto it or whatever.” She pulled the angel blade out of her jacket, twirling it, and Kevin choked on air. “Thirdly is a reason all for me, but I think the point still stands—the best chances are that I’m not six feet under. But, if I’m wrong and you guys can say that you came into Heaven dressed and armed the same way as you were when you died, then I will willingly accept my horrible fate.”

She looked around, waiting. All of them were quiet, looking at her like they were waiting for her to start laughing and tell them that she was joking, that she was actually an angel there to slaughter them, and she just rolled her eyes and got to her feet, crossing over to the old jukebox and started flipping through the music, humming to herself.

“The angels aren’t the only ones that are going to be looking for me if this is a capture gone wrong,” she pointed out over her shoulder, still tapping her foot to music only she could hear. “My family is going to be ripping up every world they can get their hands on looking for me, and that’s a fact. So we should probably work on trying to figure out some more puzzles on angel radio before some real fighting starts kicking off, what do you say?”

They didn’t reply, but she knew they would be in. She had been told about them by so many different sources that she had no doubt in her mind that they would do anything they could to help her get back to where she belonged. She clicked on a song and swaggered back to her seat as it started, kicking her boots onto the table and leaning back, humming along with the song, and, when she met Bobby’s gaze over her shoes, she grinned and winked.

 _Heat of the moment_ , the jukebox sang.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

The whole world was spinning. He hadn’t noticed he had been holding his breath, but the moment he realized, Dean gasped in a lungful of air, leaning away from the papers spilled in front of him, rubbing at his face and groaning. “Is anyone finding jack shit?” he demanded. “Because I haven’t found anything about opening the gates at all in this entire damn library.”

“Maybe we are looking in the wrong place,” Cas said, getting to his feet and starting to pace around, like he was going to suddenly find a book they hadn’t been poring over for hours. “Maybe we should go to the library, see what they might have there.”

“I think we probably shouldn’t go exploring until we figure out exactly what it is that we’re dealing with,” Sam pointed out strategically, and Dean hated to know that he was right. There could have been a massive downpour of demons and angels that they didn’t know about going on out there, and getting stuck in the middle of them when they could be looking for Grace wasn’t the smartest way to go.

“Well, we’re out of trees,” Allison said, pushing her own book away with a sigh. “Did the Internet know anything the last time you guys checked?”

“It was twenty-some years ago,” Sam replied, his eyebrows going up. “It’s possible some psychic or something knows what happened with the gates and wrote about it on their blog or something. It’s worth a try, if it means we’re going to find _something_.”

“You won’t,” a cheerful voice chimed from behind them, a familiar voice, and Dean turned so fast that he knocked his chair to the floor, his hands catching on the tabletop and gripping it so hard his knuckles went white.

Gabriel, leaning against the wall, a lollipop stick hanging out of his mouth, wagged his eyebrows at them. “Howdy, Castiel,” Gabriel greeted happily, winking at Cas, who just stared at him, his mouth opened in a universal _what the fuck am I looking at_. “Long time, no talk. It’s good to see you bucking broncos again—and by good, I mean absolutely disastrous, but you know. Context.”

“Don’t you _dare_ tell me you’ve been fucking with our minds this whole time and none of this is real, or I swear to God I will shove my fist _straight through your fucking face_ ,” Dean growled at Gabriel. The archangel simply rolled his eyes.

“Sorry, Dean-o, but this one is for real,” Gabriel told him with a big theatrical sigh, shrugging away from the wall and rolling his shoulders. “It feels good to be back. Which is what you _should_ be asking me about.”

“How?” Cas’s voice came from beside Dean, and Dean was almost surprised to remember there were other people in the room. Sam was edging into the kitchen, a deep scowl on his face, and Allison was looking at Gabriel entirely unimpressed, not knowing who Gabriel is, not understanding why Sam was nudging her behind him, like the sheer mass of his body would be enough to protect her (and the kid was the size of an office building so he probably could).

Gabriel clicked his tongue and pointed to Cas with his lollipop. “Yes. _How_. Well, a little secret that the rest of you all don’t know, is that it is a hell of a lot harder to kill an archangel than with just an angel blade. Do you really think us proud assholes could be bested by the same blade that could kill a cupid? Nope. That blade is only temporary. And now we’re awake again.”

“So it’s the archangels doing this?” Dean demanded, gesturing. Gabriel got it.

“Oh, no, forgot to mention,” Gabriel replied, snapping his fingers. “When we woke up, it kind of—hmm. You know how you bundles of love have a natural order? Yeah, well, something special came back into play and crushed that natural order to dust. Rose the archangels, and rose all of the other angry normal angels that didn’t pose an immediate threat to society. It’s all a bit of a prophecy, and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is a bit of a fan of what the Big Kahuna has to say.”

“So you’re trying to tell me that you’re an angel?” Allison demanded from the back, giving Gabriel the best face of being both unconvinced and entirely unimpressed. “Who are you supposed to be, exactly?”

“It’s Gabriel,” Sam told her quickly, watching Gabriel with trepidation, like he wasn’t entirely sure if Gabriel was above turning his wife into a bag of chips for fun. Gabriel grinned at her as her eyes widened in recognition, and then she just kind of settled into a nice and safe part of the conversation where she didn’t have to say much. Just the look of unease on her face made the archangel laugh.

“I dropped by because I figured you four would be running around in circles, chasing your damn tails,” Gabriel informed them, grinning. “So, there’s your explanation—the gates are open because every ugly angel you three killed twenty-some years ago blew them open. Lucky for you that Raphael is still six feet under, and Anna and Uriel as well. This He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named can at least be commended for keeping in mind your best interests.”

“Why now?” Dean demanded.

Gabriel shrugged. “The timing is right. It’s all a lot bigger than I’m willing to let you all know right now. You have to learn _some_ things for yourself—can’t have an angel whispering all the answers in your ears, now, can we?”

“Are these angels dangerous?” Cas demanded, his eyes shaded, and Dean could sense Cas’s internal screaming. Gabriel must have been able to see it too because he brought down his general level of douchedom a few pegs.

“They know about the punch line,” Gabriel explained slowly, “so that will eventually make them dangerous, little brother. You should have kept a closer eye on your little one.”

“So you know who took Grace?” Dean demanded, stepping forward. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel told him, an obviously, outright lie, and then he looked at his plain wrist. “Oh, dear me, look at the time—I have some archangel-ing things that need to get done. The world’s in trouble again, you know. I’ll see you bozos once you solve the Matrix.”

And, just as Gabriel was about to poof away, Cas said, “No.”

His voice radiated his power, his anger, and his grief, and even if he hadn’t had his grace for years, Cas was still an angel, and Dean sometimes forgot that. Cas stepped forward, his eyes glowing brighter, his shoulders making him taller, and they all watched in surprise as Cas closed in on Gabriel, his eyes unforgiving as he growled, “What is happening and _why_ do they want my daughter?”

Gabriel pursed his lips, and Dean, for a second, was entirely sure he was just going to bolt. But then Gabriel sighed and slumped his shoulders, shoving his hands in his pockets, regarding Cas in a way that showed he was clearly impressed with him sticking up to him, but was highly warning him away from trying to question the will of an archangel again.

“The pieces are there, Castiel,” Gabriel explained cryptically, slowly, obviously letting them in on a big secret. “You’re the ones that are going to have to put them together. Think about Grace, and of what she might mean—or you can just wait a little longer. I’m sure it won’t take long before it’s obvious.”

“Before _what_ —?” Cas started to demand, but Gabriel was already gone, and there was nothing but a Crunch wrapper left behind.

Sam took a deep breath. “I don’t like this,” he announced, shaking his head slowly, looking at the place where Gabriel had disappeared. “Angels are coming back to life—why? How? What does Grace have anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t like it,” Dean shared as well, his skin crawling. He bit his lip against a shiver that rolled up his spine, unease a wad of sickness in his stomach. He ran both of his hands through his hair before looking helplessly toward his little brother, a man he was either at odds with or the best of brothers with, but Sam still didn’t look like he had a firm grasp on accepting what had happened. Allison, meanwhile, was scowling.

“What a dick,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Okay, so angels are rising from the dead, and we’re missing something obvious—are you three just going to stand there, or are you going to start looking at the bigger picture?”

“Right,” Dean said, and then sat down suddenly, blinking. “Alright. Big picture. But we don’t know what it is.”

“It’s called being inductive,” Allison supplied him the word, patting him on the shoulder before tugging Sam along, back into the living room, to get their laptops. “We’re looking for something recent, something prominent. You know the drill—if it doesn’t smell right, it doesn’t belong.”

“Something is wrong, Dean,” Cas murmured to him, sliding down into the chair next to him, staring wide-eyed at the spot where Gabriel had been standing. Dean reached for him and found that Cas’s hands were shaking. “Only something extremely powerful would be able to resurrect archangels.”

“I know,” Dean assured him, squeezing his hand. “And, like Gabriel was trying to say, that kind of power makes a big splash in the pool when it touches down, so there’s something going on that will tell us what’s happening—we just have to find it. And then, once we find it, we might be able to understand who took Grace and where she is. Alright?”

Cas nodded slowly, looking down at the laptop in front of them before taking a deep breath. “It’s something bad, Dean,” Cas whispered, sounding petrified, and Dean would never admit it, but seeing Cas reacting like that was scaring him so bad that he could barely see straight.

Dean just squeezed his hand tighter, and said nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unedited. Sorry for that. 
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com


	5. Missing

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

Eventually, the hype from Grace’s sudden appearance and the news she brought with her dissipated to the best of its ability, and they were left in a lull of silence that Grace considered was probably typical for a group that had known each other as long as this one. Ellen and Kevin both disappeared out of the doorways, promising to be back later after they took a look around for some answers, and Grace watched curiously as they just simply stepped out the door, disappearing into the black space beyond, leading nowhere. Grace tilted her head, curious, as she watched. She looked back to find Bobby staring at her, his eyebrows disappearing somewhere up under his dirty cap.

“What?” she asked him self-consciously, frowning. He blinked at her before shaking his head, a ghost of a smile turning the corners of his lips up.

“Nothin’,” he grunted, still shaking his head. “You just reminded me of someone there for a minute.”

Grace knew well—from Dean’s teasing—that she had collected several mannerisms from her ex-angelic father, and it was almost a shock to her system to remember that Bobby had known Castiel as well. Castiel might not have been as close to him as Dean and Sam were, but Castiel was still one of the strays Bobby let in with the rain when they needed his help.

Castiel had once touched Bobby’s soul. He told Grace in hushed tones through the darkness of the old Singer parlor that it had been a soul of dark, and a soul of good.

Castiel told Grace that he was glad Bobby Singer ended up in Heaven, even if he had been intercepted into Hell first.

And this was it—Grace was looking at a perception of Bobby’s soul. There was nothing of his body here, just what he had looked like, the way his deepest desires remembered himself to be. This is what he must have looked like at the time of his death, probably. Twenty-some years later, Grace was looking at the man her father had admired, and she knew this man deserved every ounce of it.

It was humbling, to know Bobby Singer. She wanted to hug him, but, at the same time, it was like speaking to a celebrity. So, instead, she shied away, intimidated by the gruff man, and her eyes went downcast as he continued to scrutinize him as she spent the time staring at him, wincing because that was another one of her mirrored Castiel traits.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and the laugh rumbled in Bobby’s chest as he shook, offering her a small smile.

“You’re kinda like Jo over here,” Bobby told Grace, looking over to wink at the young woman in question. “You can both kick a grown man’s ass, but couldn’t look one in the eye for too long if your life depended on it.”

Jo scowled at Bobby, but she didn’t challenge him. It gave Grace a reason to smile.

Ash groaned as he trudged toward the back rooms. “I’m gonna go back to surfing the angel channels,” he enlightened them as he passed, noticeably giving Grace a large berth, to which Jo cut her a shit-eating grin. “I gotta admit, the sound of Enochian is startin’ to sound like white noise.”

“I can do it,” Grace offered, and the three remaining pairs of eyes turned to look at her. “I’m, ah, fluent in Enochian. My dad’s been teaching me since I was a kid.”

Ash stared at her, startled. “How the hell would _he_ know Enochian?”

“How the hell do _you_ know it?” Grace snapped challengingly back, narrowing her eyes. “Believe it or not, angels were a pretty big pain in the ass a while ago. It didn’t hurt to know ancient languages that even demons can speak.”

Ash looked at her closely, his eyes narrowed, like he was trying to see through her. “Enochian’s a hard language.”

“Oh, shucks, it seems my feminine mystique can’t handle such a complicated endeavor as learning a second language,” Grace replied, snarky, giving the scrawny genius a perfected rendition of a Sam Winchester Bitchface. “My IQ is almost in the two-hundreds. I think I can handle a couple hours of _white noise_.”

Jo started snickering behind her hand, but Ash looked positively scandalized. “Why are you so mean to _me_?” he mumbled with an unhappy pout, and Grace gifted him with an angelic smile. “Fine, you can take over angel radio monitoring. No, don’t get up—no one goes into my lair. Mi casa is _so_ not su casa. I’ll bring it out here.”

“Thanks, dear,” Grace called behind him sweetly, turning to look at her two companions with a grin when he disappeared into a hallway. “Is it always this much fun to push his buttons?”

“I think you’re slowly bleeding him of his sanity,” Jo laughed, grinning. “So you’re another genius, huh?”

“Suppose you could say that,” Grace replied, shrugging. “I only pull out the number when I’m feeling particularly defensive. I’m pretty good at math and cars, I guess. I used to build things out of metal scraps left around the house—for some reason, my dad thought it meant I was a genius and he got me tested. Guess he was right.”

“How old were you?”

Grace coughed embarrassingly before she muttered, “Four.”

Jo’s eyes went as wide as saucers, and even Bobby looked impressed under the shadow of his cap. Grace felt her face heating up and she shrugged, slapping on a grin, downplaying the situation to the best of her ability, hating to have all of the attention on her.

“I would ask for your stories,” Grace told them, “but it sounds like I already know enough to make you uncomfortable.”

“I forgot about those damn books,” Bobby grunted, frowning. “Please don’t tell me they got big.”

“Um,” Grace said.

Jo laughed loudly, a pleasant sound, and got up to go change the song on the jukebox to something more “upbeat”. Bobby huffed at the new news of his cult fame—although Grace was fully willing to keep the extent of it a secret, because this guy wouldn’t believe the amount of fan-art she had gotten her hands on in regards to the television show—and he leaned back in his chair, still looking at Grace but acting like he wasn’t. Grace pretended graciously not to notice, turning her attention to Ash as his scrawny twig arms nearly snapped at the weight of the handmade computer he lugged her way, letting it slam down on the tabletop between her and Bobby. She looked it over, impressed with what he was able to do without having many other resources, and he scowled at her, expecting her to say something derogatory, but she did nothing of the sort.

“You did a marvelous job on this one,” Grace told him, grinning as she looked the machine over. “You sync it to an external unit?”

“Just a printer,” he told her slowly, looking a little shocked that she wasn’t strictly a douchebag at all hours of the day. “She remembers everything else—and I remember anything we need.”

“Anything I should know?” Grace asked.

“Yeah,” Ash said. “The angels are currently all using the same radio wavelength, so you don’t need to flip around. Flag us down if you hear something weird.”

“Headphones?” she asked, and he sighed before reaching behind the bar and shoving a pair of wire earphones at her, and Grace smiled her thanks, popping one of the earbuds in as she plugged it into the computer. Immediately, she was nearly knocked out of her chair at the sound of tumbling, hurried, excited Enochian, the frequency high and pronounced. “Ugh,” was all she managed to say.

Ash smirked knowingly, relishing in his own little revenge, before he wished her luck, calling over his shoulder to not call him unless the sky starts raining fire because he’s ready to sleep for years, and they let him go, Jo settling easily into the seat next to Grace as she turned down the volume, leaning back in her seat until the chair was balanced on the back two legs.

“Hmm,” Grace murmured after a minute of listening, her eyebrows soaring. “It must have been pretty quiet around here, if some angels are getting excited over the new developments in satellite television.”

Jo let out a snort so genuine Grace was sure it had to have hurt her face.

“I almost wish you weren’t alive so you could stick around for a while,” Jo told her, grinning. “You’re a trip. You change the atmosphere from ‘boring’ to ‘sarcastic feminist’.”

This time, it was Grace’s turn to snort.

“Glad I could help,” she offered, yawning as she sat back, the sound of Enochian in her ear the oddest of comforts—it reminded her just a bit of home, when Castiel would murmur to her in Enochian at the dinner table because he knew Dean didn’t know a word, and they would both grin conspiratorially toward each other when Dean grumbled about “gossiping like old ladies”. “My charm is an ambiance best served with a triple cheeseburger and curly fries. Don’t suppose you guys have real food up here?”

“Not real food, no,” Jo replied, shrugging, “since we don’t actually have to eat. Are you hungry?”

“No,” Grace said, and then flinched, looking away. “It’s, ah—if I was home—it’s burger day.”

Jo’s face dropped in pity.

“Stupid question,” Grace said, shaking her head with a smirk. “Automatic conditioned response. My dad has Pavlov’d me since I was in diapers to see a cheeseburger and salivate.”

“You mention your dad a lot,” Jo noticed, pointing it out softly, and Grace wanted to punch herself in the mouth for ranting so much. “You must miss him, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And your mom?”

Grace smirked crookedly. “Not around.”

It wasn’t a lie. And she was pretty sure Castiel would have ended up highly insulted if he found out later that he had given him a cover of Mr. Mom.

Jo nodded before observing, “There’s a lot of single parents in hunting.”

“We all start somewhere, I guess,” Grace replied slowly. “Everyone has a reason. What better reason than revenge?”

She nodded slowly, looking at Grace carefully. “I would ask if you were interested in a game,” Jo suddenly announced, gesturing to the arcade games set up along one of the walls, “but you’ve volunteered yourself to listening to angels discuss TiVo. Bobby?”

“Pass,” the man replied as he pushed himself onto his feet, clearing his throat. “Gonna hit the books. Grace—uh, holler if you hear somethin’, or whatever.”

Grace nodded dutifully, and he paused to frown at her for a moment, like he was trying to solve a difficult equation somewhere in the back of his mind, before he smiled and shook his head, sighing as he walked and grabbed a book, taking a set at the table beside hers, and Grace tilted her head back and took a deep breath, listening to the holy voices singing Enochian around her, sinking into it.

Time didn’t pass the same up here. She knew it had been a long time, but she had no idea how to measure it by the time she heard the first strange disruption into angel radio, followed by a loud screeching of a true angel voice, making Grace flinch.

_Where is the Winchester girl?_

_Find Grace Winchester._

_Grace Winchester._

_Gabriel knows._

Grace’s eyes flew open.

_The Archangels._

_They are awake._

_Awake awake awake!_

_Some are still trapped._

_Raphael cannot escape._

_Angels are rising._

_Our Father has recalled them to life._

_They have work to do._

_We have work to do._

_We must find Grace Winchester._

_FIND GRACE WINCHESTER._

And then it all went silent.

“Oh shit,” Grace said.

Jo looked up from her card game with Ellen, Kevin, and Ash at the other table, surprised, like she had completely forgotten Grace was in the room. Bobby’s book hit the table as he lowered it, his eyes cutting her into ribbons, but Grace suddenly felt her throat closing in panic. She tried to breathe through it, tried to rationalize it, but all she could think of was the powerful, angry shriek of her name, and the ringing silence that followed the command.

_FIND GRACE WINCHESTER._

The _Archangels_. The _angels_. They are being _reborn_.

“Oh _shit_!” Grace said again, shoving the headphones from her ears and skittering back uneasily on her feet, her chair hitting the ground hard, the sound like a gunshot. Everyone was on their feet in a second, and Jo was gripping Grace’s shoulders in no time, forcing the younger girl to meet her eyes.

“Grace, what’s wrong?” Jo demanded clearly, her strong grip on Grace’s arms enough to keep her grounded. Grace shook her head, looking around at the others, not sure how to say it, not sure if she wanted to see the looks on their faces that would immediately follow her announcement.

“Shit,” Grace said one more time, for good measure. “The angels. The normal ones and the archangels—something rose them. They’ve woken up. And they’re angry. But some of them—Raphael, they said specifically—he’s still trapped. But the angels, they’re coming back to life. They aren’t dead anymore.”

“Shit,” Jo agreed, and some of the others behind them echoed some more vulgar sentences in response to Grace’s news. Jo let go of Grace’s shoulders cautiously, once she was sure Grace wasn’t going to become hysterical and run out the door, Grace supposed, and, for some reason, Grace’s gaze immediately found Bobby’s.

“They’re looking for me,” Grace told them, wincing, trying to push down her fear but it was suffocating her. She knew too much about the wrath of Heaven. “They’re—they’re pissed, to put it lightly. They were screaming. The last thing I heard was an order to find me before it completely went silent.”

Ash uttered a string of curses, and Grace had never before heard so many curse words with unnecessary nouns added onto the ends of them.

“Was that all?” Bobby demanded, in control, and Grace nodded.

“In a nutshell,” she confirmed weakly. “They were—having normal conversations before. And then someone showed up, and it all just—exploded. I think it’s safe to say that the angel in question is the one that nabbed my ass down on the surface and accidentally dropped me. Do you think I fought my way out, even if I don’t remember it?”

“You’re a fuckin’ anomaly,” Ash muttered, “so probably.”

Grace wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted, but she still said, “Okay. Okay. I’m calm. What can we do?”

“Nothing for now,” Ellen said, and then checked for Bobby’s reaction, continuing when he seemed to agree with her. “Raising flags when the heavenly host is looking under rocks for you isn’t going to help us stay off the radar. The last thing we want to be doing is ruffling any feathers.”

“So,” Grace said, “sitting ducks?”

“Just keep listening,” Bobby told her, gazing around at all of them, and, when his eyes stopped on her again, there was something hidden in them that made her think that he _knew_. “And let’s hope that nothing worse comes crawling back out of the woodwork.”

Bobby Singer should have known better than to tempt fate.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

A week went by with nothing, and Dean was becoming more and more desperate by the hour.

Cas hadn’t been sleeping, or eating, and it took until Sammy and Allison had to hold them both down and force sleeping pills and sandwiches down their throats before Dean realized that he hadn’t been doing those things, either. It felt like he was ghosting through the joke that had become his life. He remembered feeling so inadequate, so useless, because he couldn’t protect his family the way they deserved to be protected. He had failed the people that mattered the most to him, and it made him feel like a fucking failure.

He hadn’t gotten to Grace in time. He hadn’t been able to save her from whatever angel that had swooped in and stole her away. And he wanted to burn for that.

Cas wouldn’t let him, though. He stayed glued to Dean’s side, a constant reassuring presence, someone who depended on Dean to be strong enough to make it through. Dean used that as a crutch as best as he could, and Cas used him as his own, and that was the way it had worked from the beginning, when they were both struggling to cope with the horrors in their lives they had to face.

Sam understood what they were going through to an extent. He understood the panic of losing a child, even if he had only lost Tyler temporarily in the mall when he was five.

The pain of being parents in this situation would always be the same. It was somewhat of a reassurance to have someone around who could sympathize, who could handle two panicking dads.

Gabriel’s visit had changed everything. It changed every game they had been playing since the beginning of their retirement of sorts—the angels were alive, and more of them were coming to life even as they sat here. The gates were entirely blown open, and it was a fucking feeding frenzy.

But there was no sign of the angels.

They knew they were out there. Every once in a while, something obviously angelic and very unexplainable happened somewhere on the earth, and then the source disappeared again. They tried to track an angel, but they came up empty every time, frustrated and irritated.

Cas had mentioned how it was odd of them to lie low like this. How, if the situation was as it seemed to be, there should be an explosion of activity.

He had wondered aloud why the angels would be sticking to Heaven, what was more important up there than down here, and the whole world felt like it froze over when they all realized at once what the most obvious answer to that was.

The angels might not be on Earth because Grace Winchester was dragged unexplainably up to Heaven. Maybe, for whatever reason, that to them was the most important thing.

It just made Dean double over in a panic attack when he thought about it.

They didn’t know if Grace was in Heaven, or Hell, or even still somewhere in the States for all they knew. They just didn’t know. And that _not-knowing_ was like a fucking icepick to Dean’s stomach, twisting with every uncertain moment.

They were sitting around discussing if they should just draw a Devil’s trap in the middle of the living room and conjure that asshole Crowley—whose demons were terrorizing every town their smoky asses landed in, despite having made an agreement with the Winchesters twenty-some years ago to keep them in line—when Dean was suddenly hit with another terror, and he didn’t even have time to make his excuses before he was flying out of the room and up the stairs, ignoring Sam when he asked what he was doing.

Dean couldn’t even close the door behind him. He wheezed as he sunk to his knees, clutching at his chest, pretty sure that all of those burgers and getting thrown around by monsters was finally catching up to his heart and he was having a heart attack, but he recognized the panic attack in every breath he attempted to take. His back hit the footboard and Dean leaned his head back until it hit the wood, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to convince himself to breathe evenly.

All he could picture was Grace through the ages, smiling at him, laughing at something, dancing with Cas in the kitchen as she told them about her day at school. All he could see was how that all transformed to Grace, trapped in Hell, bleeding and screaming, yelling for him; Grace trapped in a room like the one Zachariah and Cas had once locked Dean in, hitting against the walls until her hands were swollen and bloody, tears running down her face; Grace bound and tied up, terrified and silent, stubborn in the face of death.

Suddenly, Dean wondered if she was cold.

A sob ripped through his chest, and he clutched at his shirt harder.

“Dean,” he heard Cas whisper from above him before he felt the familiar heat of his body against his side. One of Cas’s hands reached out to coax Dean’s grip on his shirt to loosen while the other touched his face, ran softly through his hair. Dean forced his eyes open, and blinked against blurry tears. “Dean, are you okay?”

Dean shook his head, but he knew he didn’t need to tell Cas about how destroyed he was, because he knew Cas was just as torn up instead. He had on that tough angel exterior, but Dean had always known, even when he had barely known him. Dean reached out and tugged Cas to him blindly, crushing him in a hard embrace, and Cas whispered soft words of “it’s okay” and “I’m right here” into his neck, his breath raising goose bumps. Dean just clutched him closer, unable to get himself to stop shaking.

For a while, they just sat in silence. And then Dean made a broken sound before he whispered, “I hope she’s not cold.”

It felt like such a fucking stupid thing to worry about. She could be being tortured, for all they knew, and all Dean could think about was agony at the thought of her being _cold_. But the second the words were in the air, he heard Cas’s breathing hitch, and it was suddenly the most important thing. Dean couldn’t fucking stand the thought of Grace huddling in a corner, shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering. Helpless.

“H-her jacket isn’t in her room,” Cas whispered softly after a moment, his hands shaking on Dean’s skin. “She—must have been wearing it.”

He should have been relieved to hear it, that at least she wasn’t cold. But it just made it so much worse.

“We’ll find her, Dean,” Cas whispered.

“But what if we can’t?” Dean blubbered through an onslaught of tears, not even bothering to reach up and brush them away before they dripped down into Cas’s hair, making Cas hold him even closer, his face nuzzling Dean’s neck. Cas took a deep, calming breath, pressing his lips to the hollow of Dean’s throat.

“We will,” he told him confidently, pulling away so Dean could see the blind faith in his eyes. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“We don’t know where she is,” Dean agonized. “We don’t know if they’re hurting her. Oh, God, Cas, what if they’re hurting her?”

“I don’t think they are,” Cas whispered, looking into Dean’s eyes with intensity, and Dean was almost surprised to see the smile tug onto his lips—the first smile in a week. “You know Grace—she would tear down the world before she let someone lay a hand on her.”

Dean let out a choked laugh before burying his face in Cas’s hair, breathing in the smell of his mint shampoo and honey and _home_.

“I’m terrified we won’t find her,” Dean confessed softly to Castiel in their own little cocoon, where nothing could touch them and no one else could get inside, and Cas shifted beneath him, like he was about to sit up. “I’m just—I don’t want to—I lost so many people, and I can’t—”

“You’re afraid of losing Grace,” Cas whispered, “and you’re afraid that she will have—you’re afraid that she still is mad at you.”

“She hates me,” Dean told his husband shakily, closing his eyes. “I know she does sometimes. Grace and I, we’re both two goddamn natural disasters that keep colliding, and she—”

Dean had more to say. More insecurities, more fears, more things that he would never tell anyone other than Cas and he didn’t know why. But the words froze in his throat when he realized that Cas was shaking—and that he was shaking with laughter.

“Something funny, Cas?” Dean demanded, irritated, and Cas shook his head, nuzzling his face into Dean’s chest in the process, but he sat up promptly after, an amused smile still clinging to his lips.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas said before laughing one more time, leaning forward and pressing a deep, fond kiss to his lips. Dean could feel him smiling into the kiss, and Cas pulled away with that same breathless laugh. “You’re really that blind, aren’t you? You think Grace hates you? No, no, Dean. No.”

Cas repositioned himself so that he was on his knees next to Dean, his hands reaching out to hold his face in his hands. Dean frowned at him, but Cas kept smiling at him, his eyes soft, not patronizing, residual worry and sadness clinging to those beautiful baby blues, and Dean felt his heartbeat calming every single second that passed as he stared into those familiar eyes.

“Dean,” Cas said, shaking his head. “You couldn’t possibly be more wrong. Grace—she could _never_ hate you. Never. She loves you so much even when she’s mad at you—don’t you see? You and Grace, you’re the same person. Carbon copies. It’s remarkable that you don’t see it. Not only can she build a car like you, or shoot a gun, but she can build these amazing new things out of nothing the same way you can. She sees potential in everything, and she powers on no matter how dim the outcome seems to be. She is brave enough to throw herself into dangerous situations but human enough to admit when she is wrong or needs help. She’s stubborn and plays her music too loud, but all I see in her is your eyes and your smile and your life, and it’s the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.”

Dean stared at Cas, a little taken aback by his words, but he didn’t interrupt. He watched Cas speak with reverence, with love, with passion and caring, and it made a warm feeling of compassion form its way back into Dean’s chest, warming up the parts of his heart that had been cold since Grace disappeared.

“You don’t butt heads so much because you’re different—like you said, you’re both natural forces, but not disasters. You are both strong souls of stubbornness, commitment and unerring loyalty to family, two souls fueled by self-hatred and rage and passion and desire for something bigger than what you know. Grace admires you, and she wants so much to be just like you, because she is proud of everything that you have done even if you aren’t. You are both the best human beings that I have ever known—and neither of you realize how beautiful that makes you.”

Cas leaned forward and kissed Dean’s forehead before murmuring against his skin, “Grace would never lose a fight if there was something worth fighting for.”

Dean stared at Cas for a long moment as he simmered down from his speech, taking a deep breath and dropping one of his hands to clutch for one of Dean’s, and Dean wound their fingers together tightly, not knowing what to say. Cas didn’t seem to expect him to reply at all—he leaned forward until their foreheads pressed together, their noses touching, and they sat like that for a long time.

Dean didn’t open his eyes again until Sam’s voice came from the doorway. “Allison and I called Crowley here. He’s trapped in the living room. Do you want us to handle it?”

“No,” Dean said, sighing as Cas pulled away and was on his feet in a second’s notice. Dean used the footboard to heave himself back onto his feet, reaching up and rubbing his face. “Nah—kinda want to see that douchebag again. On a scale of one to ten, how happy was he to see you?”

“Bitter,” Sam responded, rolling his eyes. “He’s a drama queen.”

Dean smirked a little as he and Cas followed Sam back down into their living room, where they did indeed find a pouting Crowley, not having aged a day, standing with a stubborn Allison, her gaze on him arctic cold. Dean had to give his little brother this—he managed to find a girl who not only didn’t think he was crazy when he told her about what he had been doing with his life before they met, but a girl who was completely unfazed at being completely submerged into it.

Crowley spotted Dean and Cas and made a noise like a choked laugh. “There they are—the remaining two thirds of the Three Musketeers. I hear you two have been sharing quite the—what was it called? _Profound bond_.”

“I’m already ready to get you the hell out of my house,” Dean told him, frowning. “I’m guessing you know why we dragged your sorry ass here?”

“I’m anything but sorry,” Crowley responded testily, bristling. “Yes, I think I have managed to hear something about a missing Winchester. What happened, boys? You lose one of the flock?”

“The angels are waking up,” Dean told the demon, his eyebrows up. “Archangels are coming back to life. _All of them_ are coming back to life. Know anything about this?”

“I know that I want to get back underground as soon as possible,” Crowley responded with a careless shrug. “I really don’t want to have to deal with angels if I don’t have to. They’re a little too messy for my taste.”

“Where is Grace?” Cas demanded, his tone hard, his eyes flashing with impatience.

Crowley turned to look at him, never showing his surprised but it was obvious that he hadn’t quite expected Cas to be in such a bad mood, but that didn’t stop him from shrugging. “I have no idea where your rugrat is. If it was angels, then she’s certainly not in Hell—like I said, I’m going laissez-faire on the whole Heaven issue. Have you tried asking a winged one?”

“We can’t find one,” Sam replied, scowling. “A little weird, huh? There are no angels around, but the surface is crawling with demons.”

“Hmm,” Crowley said, and then grinned. “Pass.”

Dean stood up a little straighter, his jaw clenching. Crowley sighed weakly.

“Someone not-me has been blowing some of those lovely Hell Gates open,” Crowley enlightened them, shrugging. “Demons are pouring out of them like mad. We felt a little cooped up over the last several years, if you could believe it. They’re overjoyed at a new chance of freedom.”

“What’s opening the gates, if it’s not you?” Sam demanded. “Other creatures?”

“I don’t know,” Crowley replied patiently, and there was a line in between his eyebrows, like it was puzzling to him, as well. “No one knows. And I’ve always been concerned when no one knows anything.”

“What’s strong enough?” Allison spoke up from her spot at the edge of the room, taking a few steps closer. “Angels?”

“I suppose,” Crowley said, “but they wouldn’t exactly want to deal with us, would they? No, I’m sure it’s not the angels. I’m not entirely sure I _want_ to know what’s been springing those gates open and letting my little brats run free.”

“Could you possibly be more cryptic?” Dean demanded, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s just all too clear.”

“Listen, daddy green eyes, I’m about as muddled about this as you are,” Crowley explained to them, throwing his hands out. “Its not every day that the damn archangels start rearing their ugly mugs back in the game. I know it’s hard to wrap your head around that, but archangels being back means something a little murky for demons.”

“Do you think that whatever opened the gates could explain what’s going on?” Allison asked.

“Probably,” Crowley replied, “but I don’t know where you would find he-she-it. I daresay that I am not that much help to you boys and your lovely wives.”

Dean’s hand flexed into a fist. He hadn’t wanted to punch someone in a long time—leave it to Crowley to reawaken that desire in him.

Sam and Dean exchanged a long look before Sam ducked down and scratched out an exit into the Devil’s trap under the rug. Crowley nodded to them as he stepped out of it, rolling his shoulders and checking his nails like he had done anything besides stand there and be snarky and unhelpful and just as douchey as Dean remembered him to be. Crowley offered them a pleasant smile, a smile of a smarmy businessman, and it made Dean grit his teeth.

“Well, if that is all,” Crowley began—

The whole room changed. Well, the _room_ stayed the same—but the atmosphere shifted so obviously and suddenly that it sent all of them, even Crowley, reeling. It felt like all of the air had been sucked from the room, and then thinly replaced, making his head spin. Dean saw Cas stumble to grab hold of the doorway, wincing as one hand reached for his head.

Dean exhaled and saw his breath. Everything after that moved in slow motion.

They all looked up at the same time, all of their heads snapping to the corner of the room as if there had been a noise to tell them someone was there. But they hadn’t needed to be told, not when they all should have known. Dean caught sight of the intruder, and he suddenly couldn’t breathe again.

Lucifer, in his restored old meat suit, leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, his mouth twisted into a sadistic grin.

“Did you miss me?” he asked his captivated audience, and then he threw his head back and laughed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a note to the first chapter when I realized that I hadn't before: This story is only canon before the mid-season nine finale, so from Morte D'Kevin on is all of my creation. Just in case you were wondering. Sorry for the confusion!
> 
> LG is only going to be updated on Wednesdays from now on. I initially jumped the gun a little bit. Sorry!
> 
> This chapter is not as edited as I'd like, but oh well.
> 
> HOW ABOUT THAT EPISODE OF SPN YESTERDAY? (9X18 META FICTION) THAT WAS CRAZY AS BALLS.
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> x Slang


	6. Realizing

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

She was alone. She thought that she would want to be, with everything she had to think about, but no—the moment the last person walked through the door of the Roadhouse, the moment the door closed behind them, it felt like they took the oxygen with them. She sunk into the nearest chair, leaning forward with her hands propped under her chin, staring hard at the wall opposite her as the angel radio’s silence seeped into the room, making it harder to breathe. Grace took a breath in and a breath out, but it felt like an elephant was seated on her chest.

The others had gone off into their own heavens in order to look for information, for abnormalities in the Heavenly order. They left her alone to watch over angel radio, as if they weren’t already aware that in the long, long, long stretch of time since the last time she had heard her name shouted over the stream, that nothing had been uttered, and it was all deadly still.

Grace was the kind of person that didn’t mind silence. She liked being able to hear herself breathe, to be able to turn around thoughts in her head without interruption, but this silence felt like a death sentence.

Her heart panged with the strong desire for home. She wanted to see her dads so bad that she thought it would kill her. Grace hadn’t been away from her parents for this long before—she realized with a jolt that she wanted more than anything to be able to go home.

She was sitting in that same spot, swallowing down her grief one breath at a time, when a familiar voice said, “I’ve never seen someone sulk with that much concentration before.”

Grace jumped, but she knew the voice, and she knew it wasn’t an ambush, but she was still unable to relax as Bobby Singer crossed the space to sit down in the seat across from her, his perceptive eyes seeing everything, analyzing her every move. She leaned back in her chair, dropping her hands to her lap, and shot him an easy smile.

“It’s a particular skill of mine,” Grace told him with sincerity, laying her hand sentimentally over her heart. “I wish I had more chances to show it off, but alas. Sulking is always disrupted in company.”

Bobby snorted. “You have an attitude, you know that?”

“Daddy’s little girl,” she purred and shot him a smirk, her eyes twinkling.

Bobby seemed amused by her antics, but no one could sway Bobby Singer on a mission. He leaned back in his seat, watching her closely, and she felt like she was being ripped apart by those eyes, eyes like Castiel’s that saw too much.

“I figured I’d hang back to see how you were holdin’ on,” Bobby told her slowly, measuring her reaction. “For a girl who’s been abducted by angels, you are surprisingly calm about it all.”

“There’s no room for panic,” she replied, shrugging. “Panicking means mistakes. I have one endgame and I will go to great lengths to make that endgame a reality—but I can’t do it until I know how.”

“You’re smarter than you like people to think you are, huh?” Bobby observed. “You throw around that IQ number like an Oprah giveaway, but you don’t believe in that number. To you, it’s just digits on paper.”

“I don’t need a test to show me intelligence,” Grace told him with a soft shrug. “I should be able to deem for myself what intelligence looks like, and I don’t think I deserve quite as much praise as I receive. Where I excel in certain areas, I fall short in others. Therefore, I feel the overall praise of a general composite of my intelligence doesn’t quite do it all justice.”

“You’re talkin’ me in circles so I’ll forget my question,” Bobby responded. “I ain’t that dull, sweetcheeks.”

“I never said you were,” Grace replied, and smiled.

“You’re a mind-games person, aren’t you,” Bobby asked, not needing a reply, rolling his eyes. “Goddamn stubborn, too. I just wanted to make sure you’re not goin’ to have a mental breakdown.”

“I grew up with this,” Grace told him. Bobby cast her a curious glance, and she breathed out a laugh before clarifying, leaning forward in her chair. “Those stories—the Winchester stories—I grew up on them. They were my bedtime stories. I lived in the lives they lived, and I learned from them the best way my so-called intelligent mind could. I grew accustomed to the idea of danger and dangerous situations with hopeless outcomes. I believe in the people who are looking for me on the ground floor, and I believe in all of you to be able to help me get back to them. My dad—he talked very fondly of you all. He trusted you, so I do too. So, no. I am not panicking. I am not yet to the point of a mental break. I still have something to believe in.”

Bobby appraised her for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Alright, I got it. It’s like knowin’ it’s a surprise party before you walk through the door and everyone pops out. I got it. But I don’t think that’s all that’s botherin’ you.”

When Dean had told Grace that Bobby was a heart-to-heart-seeking-missile sometimes, she hadn’t quite understood what he meant, as she had taken the man to be gruff and tough. Now, she completely got it. He didn’t want to cry over cups of tea—he wanted to fix people who were broken.

Grace felt a fondness toward Bobby Singer. She was sad, because she knew she would have liked to have grown up and had this grumpy man as her grandfather. She would have loved that.

“Growing up on those stories,” Grace began, breathing out slowly. “It made me feel like I’ve done nothing, that I haven’t measured up to it. You know? The brothers—and you all here—you all saved the world, more than once. You are all heroes. I grew up with this expectation that I would become one of those heroes, that I would be unconquerable, you know? And here I am—I ended up being the type-casted damsel in distress, waiting for something greater to save me. I thought I would be more than that.

“Even my dad, when I go out on hunts—right before this all happened, I snuck out of the house and went on a solo hunt. A couple of vampires out of town, no big deal. Cut and dry. I was halfway through the takedown when one took _me_ down, and out pops my dad from the shadows, and he kills the rest of them. He didn’t even give me any time to get back up and prove myself. He saw I was overpowered, and he deemed me unable to handle it. I know that he wants to protect me, but—I feel like I’m being smothered. I’m drowning in it. I can’t prove myself the way I want to.

“I sound like a typical eighteen-year-old brat, don’t I? I sound like the kind of kid that wants out of their parents’ house as quickly as possible, and wants to be independent. In some ways, yes, that is me. But I see beyond that. I see what bothers me, and I try to make my dad see it as well, but I don’t think he understands. I grew up wanting to be the best, and now it feels like I can barely even do my job as the worst, you know? It feels like I failed myself or something.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to treat you like my therapist,” Grace groaned, realizing she had been ranting, and she smiled apologetically across the table at the bearded man. “It’s fine. Honestly, it’s not something I can’t handle, and it is something I will have to handle. I just—I guess I have a problem with being helpless. I want to be the best, and I hate that I can’t, even if I’ve set these exceedingly high standards for myself.”

Bobby contemplated everything she had to say for a moment, studying her face carefully, before he sat back in his chair, his expression thoughtful.

“Was it your daddy that taught you to hunt?” Bobby asked.

Grace blinked. “Yeah. When I was ten. It was—necessary. A precaution, if you will. He didn’t expect me to get a taste for it.”

“Does he still hunt?”

“When he has to. When it’s close enough to home that he doesn’t like it. Sometimes he’ll take some big stuff for something to do, but he doesn’t like being away from home for long.”

Bobby nodded slowly and then said, “You ever consider that he might be so controllin’ over you huntin’ because he didn’t think you’d like it and didn’t want that life for you?”

“Oh, I know that’s the reason. He hasn’t kept his motives silent in the argument. It’s—it’s foolish, on my part. Teenage reasoning. I suppose I just feel . . . claustrophobic, and I am lashing out because of it.”

“I can understand both sides,” Bobby agreed, and then leaned forward. “Is huntin’ what you want to do?”

“Yes,” Grace replied. “I want to prove myself.”

“That’s not what I asked you, girly,” Bobby told her, shaking his head. “Don’t think about it as you owin’ the world anything, or owin’ it to your daddy—do you want to hunt? Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Grace said, and she had no doubt in her mind that she would love to hunt like her father did—when she had the time, when she had the energy. On her schedule. She knew what she wanted for herself when it came to the unknown of the monsters hidden under beds.

“Okay,” Bobby said, shrugging, “so there’s that. That’s the end of the argument. Your life will cease to be yours if you let what other people expect of you stop you. Even if your old man doesn’t want you out huntin’, you have to keep in mind what you want for yourself, and just because he’s seen more and lived longer doesn’t always mean that he knows what is best for _you_. You have to take control of your own life and your own destiny.”

“Free will,” Grace said, and then laughed. “That’s the kind of thinking that started it all.”

Bobby grinned at her and told her, “You can go up to every single person who went through that apocalypse, living or not, and ask them if they regretted a damn thing about it, and I’m sure that all of them would say no. I would. I don’t regret a damn thing. We chose our sides, and we chose our own path. Just because there’s a fork in the road don’t mean you can’t keep going straight—just means it’s gonna be a little harder. Sometimes, it’s the right choice, above it all.”

Grace’s mouth twitched, and she replied softly, teasingly, “My dad wouldn’t be pleased to hear you telling me this.”

Bobby heaved himself out of his chair and smirked down at her. “Well, if I knew a _Starkey_ , then I’d tell that boy to open his damn eyes and take a good hard look at the strong young woman he raised. I’d tell him to not be so damn afraid of his own shadow that he can’t let her go out and rule the world if that’s what she wants; if that’s what she _deserves_. But I don’t know a Starkey, do I?”

Grace looked up at him, wearing her perfect poker face. Bobby just smiled at her softly, emotionally, his eyes shining and watery as he looked down at her, and she wondered how long he had known.

He cleared his throat and swallowed hard before he asked, his voice obviously gruffer, “If I leave you here, you gonna do more of that sulkin’?”

“Probably,” Grace told him gravely. “I am but a temperamental teenager. It is my duty.”

Bobby rolled his eyes before he winked at her. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

He was almost gone before she found her voice again, and she called to his back, “Bobby?”

He turned to look at her, and he found her smiling at him, her face so much like the one he knew that he must have felt it in his heart, because she saw it in his eyes when she whispered, “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Bobby told her, his voice sincere and vulnerable, and then he turned and left her there to think for herself, to be her own person—to learn a thing or two about the true nature of free will.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Sam looked like he had been hit in the chest with a baseball bat.

Lucifer groaned from where he was standing, throwing his arms out dramatically and grinning at them. “Come _on_! Don’t give me those looks! You can’t say you never expected to see me again, Dean, Sam. I’m really _not_ that unpredictable.”

“This is _impossible_ ,” Sam said through his teeth, and Dean saw his hand automatically twitch toward a scar on his palm that was no longer there. Dean’s stomach flipped to think that Sam believed it, for at least a moment, to be a hallucination. “There’s no way for you to have gotten out. There’s no _way_.”

“Wrong,” Lucifer let him down softly, shrugging animatedly. “It looks like no one told you the punch line, huh? Well, that’s sad. Takes away from of the residual bitterness and desperation, you know? Oh—hello, Castiel. It seems that you’re missing part of yourself.”

Cas stared at Lucifer, but he didn’t say anything. His face was pale.

Dean always seemed to forget that Cas had once taken Sam’s hallucinations. He seemed to forget that it was the demented angel in front of him that had caused Castiel to temporarily lose his mind.

Dean didn’t know how he could possibly keep forgetting all of the sacrifices Cas made for him, but he still found himself in these sharp moments of remembering.

Dean felt like he was going to be sick. Sam was right—this was impossible. It just couldn’t be happening.

It couldn’t.

Lucifer seemed to enjoy their expressions—Sam, Dean, and Castiel must have looked horrified, while Allison didn’t quite seem to know who she was looking at but had a damn good enough idea, and Crowley must have been pissing his pants. Maybe later, Dean would regret not having taken a look to see if Crowley at least showed a hint of fear.

Lucifer grinned at them. “Calm down, everyone—I’m not here to hurt, maim, kill, or destroy any of you. Frankly, I’m torn between beseeching you and congratulating you. Whatever popped open my little box must truly have it out for you boys.”

“It’s open?” Dean demanded, not knowing where his voice was coming from but figuring he could roll with it. “It just fucking _swung open_?”

“Yup,” Lucifer replied, popping the ‘p’. “Michael and I crawled our way back out not too long ago. If you all had been less worried about your _drama_ , you would have seen the astronomical affects of my cage opening. Oh, yes. Comin’ out of my cage, and I’m doin’ just fine.”

Lucifer continued to hum as he paced around the edge of the room, looking around at it all like he was appraising a house for sale, considering if there was enough natural lighting or if there was fucking water damage. Dean would never really be able to wrap his head around how casually Lucifer, Satan himself, lived his life.

“Figured I would stop in and make sure you knew the details of this new little spur of action,” Lucifer told them, smiling like he was doing a great service, but Sam was backing away from Lucifer, ever-so-slightly, pulling Allison behind him. “Didn’t know if you guys were watching for the signs or not. Oh, boys—this is gonna be a fun one.”

“What are you talking about?” Cas demanded coldly, mechanically, a violent thunderstorm under his words. “You speak as if there is a prophecy.”

“Of course there is, Castiel,” Lucifer chided him, sighing. “We couldn’t let the Winchester’s favorite pet know about it—it seems we all knew that you would spill the beans, and it would never come to pass. Instead, we let you dutifully fall into your place in it. We’re all living the dream. End of days, take two! The _real_ showdown!”

Lucifer grinned at them. No one grinned back.

“The angels want war,” Lucifer sang, laughing. “They aren’t going to let this final event get away from them the way they did the last time. There’s no way it can go wrong, really. There was always this second story, this second possibility. A fallback, if you will. There was a fifty percent chance that Sam would be able to overtake me and toss Michael and I into my cage. The angels have always had a contingency.”

“I’ll never say it again,” Sam growled through his teeth, his hands shaking. “I’ll never give you permission.”

Lucifer stopped moving, turning to fully face Sam, looking truly shocked. The room stood in static for that long moment. And then Lucifer was laughing louder than ever, his whole body into it, and Dean felt like the sound was similar to nails on a chalkboard.

Dean unconsciously shifted to stand as much in front of Cas as he could.

“Sam, Sam, Sam,” Lucifer howled with laughter, reaching up to wipe away tears, gasping in breath as he grinned widely. “Oh, Sam, you make me laugh. I’ve missed you. No, Sam. I don’t need you anymore. You’re not nearly as much of the Ferrari on campus, if you know what I mean.”

They should have. They didn’t. He didn’t give them the time to consider it for themselves.

“No, the new gospel is the good stuff,” Lucifer told them, clapping his hands together. “The last true descendants of Cain and Abel. It’ll be the ultimate showdown. In one corner, Abel’s descendant, the little sibling—clever Tyler Winchester. And his opponent, Cain’s endgame, oldest in the family—the fearless Grace Winchester. That’s the way this is going to happen, Sam—it always happens my way, and we always end up here. Your son will say yes to me without me having to force him, and the apocalypse will happen again, and you will be unable to stop it. Sam and Dean, you were true vessels, but your children? Damn. They’re even stronger.”

“Stay away from my son,” Sam snarled. Dean couldn’t breathe. He felt like he was going to vomit. He thought to himself offhandedly that he hadn’t eaten anything he could throw up. He was going to vomit and stop breathing and start screaming, but Sam was yelling at Lucifer, “He will _never_ say yes to you, you _crazy asshole_!”

“You said that to me every time but for the last,” Lucifer pointed out carefully, smiling. “Your son will say yes to me because that is how it has always been written. It is how it will always be, and it _will_ be. He will choose to say yes, and he will. And you will not be able to stop him.”

Lucifer took a deep breath, trying to look sorrowful toward Dean and Cas, the horrified parents, but Lucifer ended up grinning, his eyes glittering mischievously.

“I will not force Tyler to do anything,” Lucifer said to Dean and Cas, practically purring, “but I cannot imagine what the angels must be doing to persuade poor Grace into obedience. She must truly be brave.”

Dean snapped. Right then and there, he snapped. He felt his jaw clench and he moved forward to charge at the monster in front of him, the most disgusting and putrid of all the cockroaches he has been stepping on his entire life, wanting more than anything to feel his bones breaking under his hands—but Lucifer smirked and shook his head, reaching up one finger telling him to halt. And Dean did, hating that he had to, but knowing that he would be no use to Grace dead, even if he wished he could finish the job for her and just massacre Satan with his bare hands.

Lucifer winked at Dean before turning to Crowley, acknowledging solely him for the first time. “Mr. Crowley. Thanks for looking after my assets. You’ll be of some use to me in the future. Keep up the good work.”

Crowley nodded weakly, even he a little speechless looking into the eyes of the Devil, and Lucifer grinned around at them all.

“Well,” he said, clapping his hands together again, “it was rejuvenating to see you again, Sam, Dean. I will enjoy watching you fall straight into your fate for a second time, and I am sure that I will inevitably see you again at the final showdown while you try to change the ending.” He rolled his eyes. “You know the place. And it depends on your kiddos for the time, so I’m sure you’ll know before even I do.”

Lucifer grinned and winked.

And then he was gone.

No one moved. No one breathed. And then Crowley announced evenly, “Fuck this”, and he disappeared.

Dean blinked once, twice. He reached back, his hands skimming Cas’s shirt, and he whispered hoarsely, “No.”

“Allison,” Sam said through frozen lips, still staring at the spot where Lucifer had disappeared. “Allison, go call Ty. Now. Tell him to say no to everyone, no matter who it is, no matter what they offer him. Warding won’t keep Lucifer out of his head. Tell him that we’re coming to get him as soon as possible, okay?”

“Sam,” Allison said, sounding choked.

“Allison, please,” Sam whispered, sounding terrified, and she flew into the kitchen, grabbing up her phone, and was waiting for Tyler to pick up in seconds.

Dean—he was frozen. And he was thawing. His hands were shaking and he thought his knees would buckle when he turned around to face Cas, and he was sure he was going to hit the ground in a horrific breakdown when he saw the look on Cas’s face.

Horror and devastation. It was the face of a man who had just seen God’s will, and could never believe something so cruel.

He hadn’t even looked this affected when he was filled with Leviathans, prepared to die to save the world.

“Cas?” Dean whispered, his voice shaking. “Cas, they have her. They have her as the Michael vessel. Oh God, Cas, we should have known—they’re hurting her, aren’t they?”

Cas made a strangled sound in the back of his throat before he sunk down to the ground, unable to hold himself up anymore, his hands desperately gripping at his hair.

“Grace,” he mumbled, closing his eyes and shuddering. “No, Grace, no.”

“She won’t say yes,” Dean choked out, sounding like he was dying as he dropped to his knees, reaching blindly for Cas, his eyes blurred with tears. “Cas, she won’t—she’ll refuse to—they’re gonna torture her. They’re gonna condition her and hurt her and make her say yes. She won’t do it.”

Cas made another one of those desperate sounds before reaching for Dean, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and hanging on, his blue eyes finding Dean’s and staring at him desperately, like Dean could heal him with a look, but Dean didn’t even know in that moment which fucking direction was up.

“Grace,” they whispered together, their private prayer.

And somehow, right then, Dean knew he was going to lose her. He was going to lose his daughter to a fight they should have ended twenty-plus years ago. They should have known there would be a Plan B. There always was. There was order; there were rules, obedience, and loyalty. That was all it ever was.

“We’ll find her, Cas,” Dean told him, but he already knew. “We’ll get her back.”

Cas looked at him, and he knew, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com


	7. Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grace's fighting style in the chapter is like the Black Widow's, the name of which actually escapes me right now.

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

Before the angel radio incident, the Roadhouse crew figured they had plenty of time. With hindsight, they knew they certainly should have known better, and they spent long patches of time pouring over scrolls and research books and everything else Ash was somehow able to dig up from the background of his infallible memory. Grace flipped mindlessly through an old book of legends she was pretty sure she already read before, the sound of her newfound friends doing the same a constant echo, the soft static sound of the empty angel radio filling the space left.

Grace mumbled in Enochian under her breath about the pointlessness of this task, and Ash called from the pool tables, “I heard that!”

Grace was in the middle of telling Ash just where he could take his sensitive ears when a sudden siren screeched into the air from the computer, louder than a foghorn, and Grace slammed her hands over ears, wincing.

“Shit!” Ash yelled, followed by the sound of something loud falling over. “Angel incoming!”

“What?” Grace screeched as Bobby’s hand clamped onto her arm and hauled her with him to behind the wall where Ash was currently hiding, Ellen and Jo ducking behind one of the shooting games while Kevin took refuge behind the more kindly Pac-Man. “I thought your warding was supposed to keep them away!”

“Only if they don’t know what to look for!” Ash replied over the sound, and then waved wildly, shaking his head at her. “SHHH!”

Insulted that he had shushed her, Grace turned away to free her angel blade, crouching just beside the doorway, ready for the ambush just as the sound on the computer suddenly shut down, returning to that eerie silence of unspoken words. Grace hated that sound.

The door to the Roadhouse flew open, slamming against the wall loudly with a sound like a gunshot, and Grace’s hand immediately tightened on her blade. She and the rest of the Roadhouse crew stood in a tense silence, holding their breath as they listened to the shuffling footsteps the figure took into the building, letting the door shut neatly behind them. The footsteps—a man’s, Grace determined—sounded softly through the Roadhouse, coming closer, like they were taking a good look around.

Grace recognized the sound of the shoe and wanted to frown. She hadn’t known any angels to wear Converse before.

The footsteps sounded right outside the doorway. Bobby realized her plan one entire second too late.

Grace launched herself from her hiding place and caught the angel off guard, both of them slamming into the ground hard, and Grace used that momentum to take the initiative, grabbing for the angel’s throat. The angel was faster, though, and had the home field advantage—she was suddenly hitting the wall on the other side of the building, gasping at the force pressing down on her chest, holding her a foot off of the ground, the angel an arm’s length away.

He looked annoyed.

“Do I have to fly a fucking white flag around on my forehead or something?” the young man demanded of her, scowling. “I came here to ask a couple of questions, not become a damn kabob.”

The force holding Grace suddenly went away and she was dropped onto her feet, gasping in the air she hadn’t been able to receive. The Roadhouse crew had followed them into the room, were yelling for the angel to stand down, but he was unarmed and didn’t look like he was in the mood to fight. He just sighed and rolled his eyes at them before flicking his hand, and their weapons flew across the room.

“This one is the only one with the senses to grab a weapon that could actually harm me,” the angel told them, rolling his eyes, before looking back to her with a frown. “Wait a second, how the _hell_ do you get an angel blade?”

Grace wasn’t in the mood for this. She leaped, silently thanking all of those gymnastics and self-defense lessons as she cut through the air, using his defensively raised arms as an anchor, twisting and catching his throat around her knees and using the momentum to take him down, him hitting the ground with a loud groan and Grace falling on top of him, her legs pressing in on his airways, her ass holding his shoulders down. He squirmed uselessly, gasping, his big blue eyes wide and alarmed as he stared up at her. Grace flexed her legs, watching him wince at the added pressure.

“You’re not in charge here, you celestial douche,” Grace growled to him, holding the blade against the side of his throat, narrowing her eyes challengingly. “We can do this the hard way or the dead way, but you’re gonna answer some questions first.”

The angel stared up at her, looking surprised. And then he started laughing, his laughter like wheezing since Grace was still firmly pressing down on his chest and throat, but the sound carried, overtaking the silence like it had simply been holding the place of where his voice belonged.

“My, my, look at you,” the angel laughed, smirking up at her. “Don’t tell me—freckles, a murderous rage, and a hand-me-down angel blade?” His eyes sparkled with divine wrath when he purred, “You must be a Winchester.”

She heard the sharp intakes of breath behind her, but she didn’t have time for damage control. She narrowed her eyes at the young grinning man underneath of her, trying not to think of how dangerous he was rather than how attractive, knowing deep in her stomach what Castiel had once teased of her—that the angels with the brightest eyes were the ones with the most power.

The angel with crystal blue eyes watched her hesitation and smirked up at her like he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“I’m not here to be more of a dick than I need to be, Your Highness,” the angel told her, rolling his eyes sarcastically. “I’m virtually untraceable. I didn’t alert any of my angel friends that I am here. In fact, you’ll be unsurprised to know that I actually don’t _have_ any friends. It’s just me, myself, and I looking into the curious case of Grace Winchester. Mind letting me up so we can have a . . . _civilized_ conversation?”

Grace stared down at the angel for several moments, scowling as she considered the offer. He was acting standoffish and like a total bag of dicks, but still—she liked to think that she was rather good with reading people, and she saw a tiredness in his eyes behind it all, a gentleness and a kindness, and she realized that _she_ was the one to begin acting hostile, and not him. She reluctantly nodded, trusting angels about as far as she could throw them, and she moved the blade away from his neck before hauling him upright with her. He scrambled away once he was on his feet, brushing his shirt off, staring at her in alarm.

“Jeez, twig, did you eat your Wheaties this morning or something?” he demanded, sounding just as horrified as he looked. “What gives you the right, throwing a grown-ass man around like that?”

“Angel,” Grace began slowly, “I really don’t have the time for this.”

The angel rolled his eyes and muttered something about patience being a virtue before standing up straighter, rising to a height probably just a little over where Dean stood but not surpassing Sam, and he crossed his arms over his chest, smiling calmly as he looked at her.

“You sure do live up to all of this talk about you, Miss Grace,” the angel told her, grinning. “Some were worried you wouldn’t live up to the Winchester name, but look at you. You’re a girl version of Daddy Dean.”

Grace’s eyebrows went up. The angel smirked before bowing and announcing, “I’m Milo, and I’m here to save the lady from the dastardly dragon.”

“Milo,” Grace replied skeptically. “You sure? That’s no angel name.”

“It’s my vessel’s,” the angel, Milo, told her, shrugging and offering her an easy smile that was even easier on the eyes. “I like him a lot more than I like myself, needless to say. It’s mostly a self-esteem thing. I might even tell you my real name if I trust you not to maim me.”

“Okay, _Milo_ , so you wanna save me—why?”

“You’re too pretty to die,” he mocked her, and then sobered up when she snarled and started forward with the blade, raising his hands in surrender and sighing. “Jeez, dollface, try to hold back the hereditary rage, alright? I’m in it to save you because I am big on prophecy and fate, and you’re a whopper of both. I don’t like seeing terrible things happen to good people as long as there is some way to change it.”

“Prophecy?” Grace demanded, glancing back to Bobby, but Bobby looked just as cautious of the angel in front of her. Kevin, having been killed by a strange angel, was practically halfway to throwing himself through the nearest wall to escape. Jo, Ellen, and Ash didn’t look much more pleased. Grace turned back to Milo with a scowl. “Plan on sharing with the class?”

Milo looked at her for a long moment, seeming like he was waiting for the punch line. When he realized that was all she had, his face suddenly fell, turning to something despairing. “You really don’t know why you’re here, do you?” he asked her.

Grace stared at him.

She meant to study him, but she couldn’t help but to be caught up in how attractive he—his vessel—is. Grace wondered sardonically to herself if angels had a vanity problem as she looked over his ruffled brown hair, his big blue eyes, his lips that looked made to smile. His teeth were endearingly imperfect, the light of his smile overshadowing every mistake in their creation. He was tall, and muscular, but somehow still gangly, although he must have been several years older than her.

More than anything, Milo just looked like a man on the run who was ready to stand in place again.

And although he used a sharp tongue to hide behind, Grace knew very well how to see through that kind of façade. It was the same mask she threw up to protect herself when someone caught her off guard; it was exactly what Dean had always done when he didn’t want someone to see what he was really thinking.

Milo was doing the same thing, really. Grace could see through it, and all she saw was an unexpected kindness and a mournful sadness. This was a man who had seen too much.

Despite her better judgment, she trusted him instantly.

“What’s happening?” Grace asked through frozen lips, her eyes locked on the angel before her. He seemed to crumple in on himself, just slightly, his shoulders buckling, shaving off a couple of inches. He hung his head a little lower as he glanced around the room.

“You must be aware of the archangels rising,” Milo said slowly, and Grace nodded. “I figured this group would have managed to, ah, _access_ that kind of information.”

“From what we heard, Raphael is alive, but he is still trapped somewhere,” Grace supplied him, waving Ash off when he made a whining sound, like he was warning her against sharing trade secrets. She figured it was worth it to trust Milo—worst case, she could definitely kill him before he managed to walk out the door. “And Gabriel—all I managed to get from that is that he knows something.”

Milo laughed through his nose before rolling his eyes fondly. “Gabriel always knows too much about everything. I do know what that means—it seems that Gabriel, upon being recalled to life, immediately made his way to the Winchesters to give them a warning for what’s to come.”

“Did he tell them where I am?” Grace demanded, taking an involuntary step forward, her hand flexing automatically around the blade when she noticed how close it put her, but Milo didn’t even seem to notice or care that she had moved at all.

Milo shook his head. “No. If I’m correct, he was asked for your location, and then made hasty excuses and fled. They seemed very frustrated.”

“They?”

“The Winchesters, all of them but for your cousin, have congregated under the roof of your home,” Milo informed her, tilting his head. “Although I do believe your cousin will soon join them.”

“So they don’t know where I am.”

“No.”

Grace pursed her lips together before taking a deep breath. “Where is Raphael, if he is trapped?”

“Angels who have perished have their own part of Heaven, so to speak. Their grace becomes a power source. Their bones join the path of the Axis Mundi. Raphael is awake, but he is caged and imprisoned for his hostile actions of the past by the same force that revived him and the other angels.”

“Who did it?” Grace asked curiously. “Who would do that?”

“Someone,” Milo said slowly, “who believed it to be right. Someone who thought it to be prophecy.”

Milo looked into her eyes, and she saw a burning man.

She didn’t say anything, but she knew that he noticed her skills of observation, and there was no way he had done such a move on accident. It didn’t seem like their audience had noticed a word off on his sentence, so she nodded and played it off, clenching her hands tighter to keep them from shaking.

Milo had just confessed so much, but, for some reason, she still trusted him.

“Are the angels that have been given a new life hostile?” Grace decided on the words slowly, carefully, testing them on her tongue like they weighed a million mistakes.

“Not many of them,” Milo admitted, shrugging. “The process of giving them back their lives—they still have their graces, but only part of it. They are not nearly as strong as they once were because there is no need for them to be. They still owe so much to Heaven, and what Heaven deserves had stayed behind where it belongs. They are much more happy to simply be able to have their own conscious minds and moveable limbs again.”

“So I don’t have to worry about any of them going and visiting some old enemies?”

“No,” Milo said resolutely, like he had considered it, too. “Although they were not conscious, they were aware of every waking moment in Heaven, and they are aware of the things your family has done in order to make up for any destructive actions. I do not think it is a direct angel attack that you need to worry about, if you do not know about the prophecy.”

“I don’t like the sound of a prophecy,” Grace told Milo honestly, and Milo laughed wistfully.

“There are some,” Milo explained, “that are entirely not in your favor.”

“You know something that you don’t want to tell me,” Grace announced the obvious, tilting her head inquiringly. Milo smiled in defeat, like he would never get over how much of a lousy liar he is.

“Almost three decades ago, the Winchester brothers managed to avoid the apocalypse and save the world,” Milo told them all a story they already knew, and then changed everything when he continued, “but they were unaware that there was a contingency plan.”

“What does that mean?” Grace knew, though. She must have known all along in the back of her mind, because it couldn’t have been anything but this. Her stomach was sinking, her skin cold. “What do you mean, a contingency plan?”

“A prophecy,” Milo explained softly, eyes flashing in pity, “in case they did manage to succeed in their attempts. There—the word was written and stored away, hidden from the eyes and minds of many angels. The Winchesters thought they stopped it, but they only delayed the inevitable—it has always been written that the end of days will come to pass, but not many knew there were too possible endings. It could have ended with Sam Winchester or Adam Milligan, but there was an alternate ending. This ending takes place with the vessels of Grace and Tyler Winchester.”

Grace was staring at him, reeling, shaking her head because she knew he was about to speak the words that would bring the world to its knees, but he said them anyway, because that was the way it always had to be.

“Michael and Lucifer walk free from their cage,” Milo told her solemnly, his voice choked in sorrow. “It has already begun.”

Grace was shaking her head and speaking long before she could even begin considering recovering.

“No,” she said resolutely, shaking her head vehemently. “No, no, that’s impossible. Lucifer—the cage is _locked_. The key is _gone_. Nothing could _possibly_ open those doors again.”

“Not even something,” Milo whispered, “that rose archangels and seraphs from their graves?”

Grace stared at him, horrified. He looked away.

“That’s why I’m here,” Grace said, her voice stronger than she expected it to be. “They knew it was coming to pass, and they tried to take me here, so I would be ready when Michael came to ask for permission. But they dropped me.”

“I do believe it was Zachariah who came to bring you here,” Milo enlightened her, “and you kicked the shit out of him in midair, and he lost his grip.”

Unable to help herself, Grace choked out a laugh. “Sounds like me,” she responded weakly, offering a smile, and Milo sacrificed one in return, seeming relieved at how well she was taking the news.

She kind of wanted to scream. But she would be lying if she said she hadn’t laid up some nights thinking long and hard about how she was the rightful Michael vessel, how she was the last true descendant of Cain himself. She had known this destiny could be a possibility for a long time, but it still had seemed so unlikely and impossible that it hadn’t even crossed her mind as something worthy to consider when she was trying to understand why she was here.

But, now that she knew, it made sense. It made so much sense.

“Do they know?” Grace whispered brokenly, closing her eyes in an attempt to blink back desperate tears.

“Yes,” Milo told her slowly, but he was honest, and he left nothing secret. “They were confronted by Lucifer who felt the need to gloat about his freedom. They know everything now. It has only strengthened their desire to find you.”

“But I’m fine,” Grace insisted, opening her eyes again, and she stood taller. “I’m fine here. I am hidden, possibly even better hidden than I would be if I were down on the surface. Wouldn’t Lucifer know that I am missing and have spilled the beans?”

“I’m sure he does,” Milo agreed, “but, if I know Lucifer, and I do well enough, and I am also rather omniscient so I know many things—anyway, I can say this with amounting confidence—Lucifer is a prick, and he fed your dad a line that made him worry about you so much that he had a panic attack right then and there.”

Grace couldn’t help it—she rolled her eyes.

“Smooth as crunchy peanut butter, Dean,” Grace remarked, and then laughed louder, truer, coming back into her skin. “Okay. The shock is passing. I—I’m shocked, and I’m upset, but I’m in focus. Eyes on the prize, I guess. I assume the prize is being able to come out of this not as a drooling mess.”

“You read the books,” Milo said approvingly, beaming at her.

The smile caught her off guard. It was warm, and it shone with a light that could put the Almighty’s to shame. It was a contagion, and Grace caught it, unable to keep the shy responding smile off of her face.

“I would also like to come out of it not dead,” Grace added for good measure.

“Setting reasonable goals helps optimism,” Milo responded, and Grace let out an inelegant snort.

“Okay. So, now that the shocking, life-ruining part of the evening is over, let’s get back to basics. You came here because you wanted to ‘save’ me. In what context? I don’t suppose there is a third ending, huh?”

“No, Grace,” Milo said with a sigh. “It was always meant for this, ultimately. There is no way out of this, no trick that wouldn’t have already been considered. No—I only wished to return you to your family, and help you fight your fate to the best of my abilities.”

“Generous,” Grace said, her eyebrows going up. “What’s in this for you?”

Milo gave her a shit-eating grin and only offered one word in reply: “Prophecy.”

Grace didn’t get the joke, but Milo laughed all the same.

“And what if I don’t trust you?” Grace demanded, but it was moot—they all know she would have killed him long ago if she didn’t trust him at least a little bit. But Milo still smiled, and patiently offered her an answer.

“You aren’t required to,” he replied simply, “but it would be easier for us both if you did. I just want you to let me help, because I feel like I must—for both selfish and purely unselfish reasons.”

“What reasons are those?”

“Prophecy,” Milo said again, and laughed again. “And a good deed owed. Back in the days of the angelic civil war, I was very faithful to Castiel. I believed strongly in his idea of free will, of controlling your own destiny. It was painful to see him fall the way he did—it destroyed Heaven to watch an angel bleed like that. I want to offer my allegiance to that faith once more, and this—defying the angels of Heaven to bring about the apocalypse the way it deserves, with choice? It would be a true act of free will, and a true act of humanity.”

Grace looked at Milo, feeling his sincerity, basking in the warmth and belief and faith that he put behind those words, and Grace realized she had never been so captivated by someone in her entire life. She nodded slowly, deeply caught in the spell of him, in the mysterious angel with blue eyes.

Like father, like daughter.

“I’m going to need you to tell my family I’m okay,” she told Milo after a long moment of silence. “Use these exact words: ‘It’s just Pleasantville.’ Okay? Make sure you tell them that, specifically Dean, alright? And then you can tell him everything you feel like spilling the beans about. But I know they’re definitely gonna keep their mouths shut unless you tell them, especially if a strange angel descends from Heaven with a message from their missing daughter. Think you can handle that?”

“I am not _unable_ ,” he responded to her flatly, frowning. “Yes, Highness, I think I got it. Tell them howdy, drop your name, Pleasantville, Q-and-A.”

“Tell them everything,” Grace told him.

Milo nodded, and offered her a kind smile. “I can do that. I will return soon.”

With one more acknowledging nod in the direction of their stunned-silent peanut gallery, Milo disappeared into thin air, and Grace slowly moved to secure the angel blade back into her coat, taking deep breaths in a desperate attempt to calm her body down enough to stop her hands from shaking.

She was so caught up in the horror of it all—Michael’s vessel, a newfound apocalypse, the cage open—that she entirely forgot that something as simple as a few people finding out her last name had the potential to destroy everything that she had made here.

“You’re a Winchester?” Jo demanded the moment Grace was facing them, and she froze, looking at them with widening eyes, unable to make out the expressions on their faces, but none of them looked genuinely pleased. Like they’d established the first day, everyone in this room had died for or because of a Winchester. And now here she was, the daughter of one of the men that practically shoved them into their coffins, and she had no idea what she could possibly say to them.

So she said, “Surprise?”

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Half a week passed, and Dean was sure he would have been scratching at the paint if he hadn’t been given the impromptu road trip with his sister-in-law to chew on to go and retrieve Ty from where the poor kid had been dumped off at in Arizona. Allison didn’t object when Dean played his music loud with all of the windows down, and she didn’t try to make him talk if he didn’t want to—she just let him go about with his life as he pleased, and he was thankful to have been paired with the half of that relationship that was willing to let him stew in his own juices for a couple of hours. Dean had no doubt in his mind that Sam and turned and started trying to get Cas to talk about his feelings the moment he and Allison pulled out of the driveway.

Dean didn’t talk about his feelings the entire drive. There wasn’t much more left to say.

He hated himself for leading the world to this unavoidable mess. He hated that he couldn’t go back and change it and save Grace from this fate. He hated that Cas hadn’t be the goddamn donor like Dean had wanted him to be, because then they would have never had to deal with this.

Dean hated himself in silence, and longed for every part of him that remained missing. When Dean and Allison returned back home with Ty in tow and Dean saw Cas, he felt a little piece of that fall away, but Dean knew that he would never truly be at peace again until he knew where Grace was, and if she was okay.

Dean couldn’t stop thinking about what the angels were doing to her. He couldn’t help but to be deathly afraid.

He wanted to burst into where they were keeping Grace and bring her home.

But he did the only thing he could do, and he tightened his arms around Cas, listening to him breathe, the hum of the newscaster’s story sucking the air out of the room.

Sam didn’t look away from the television when he whispered sorrowfully, “It’s getting worse.”

“Not like we don’t know why.” Dean reached up and rubbed his face, and Cas’s arms tightened around his waist. “It’s the same shit as when Luci was in his prime.”

“I remember doing things like this,” Sam told him softly, his voice hoarse as he talked about it, and he turned to look at Dean with a lost look in his eyes. “He made me do things like this. He slaughtered a couple of demons just because he thought I would want to let off some steam. I—I know I can’t blame myself for that, when I’ve done so much, but it’s always in the back of my mind. I can’t help but to look at these stories and think that it might be Ty doing these things next, and I know he’ll never recover from it.”

Dean didn’t know what to say to that, so he changed the subject to the only thing he could think about. “I miss her.”

“We’re not giving up on finding her, Dean,” Sam told him, turning to look at him sincerely. Dean didn’t know why, but he suddenly noticed a hint of gray at Sam’s temples, and his stomach plummeted, wondering how his entire life had gone this far and he’d ended up with the same thing he always had—nothing. Sam caught him downward spiraling because he said a little louder, “Hey, no, stop. Dean, seriously. She’s gonna be okay, alright? I know you still look at her and see a little kid, but I see a girl who has mastered three different martial arts.”

“She still sleeps with a Pooh Bear,” Dean deadpanned.

From the doorway, a man burst out laughing.

“You’re kidding,” the man laughed, oblivious as the three in the living room rocketed to their feet defensively. “Little Miss Sunshine cuddles with a teddy bear? This day keeps getting better and _better_.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Dean demanded, reaching blindly to his pockets for a weapon, unable to take his eyes off of the unruly-haired, blue-eyed douche that just materialized in his living room.

The stranger’s grin widened as he responded in a mocking deep voice, “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Dean was saved from giving a scathing reply by the shot of a gun, and the guy recoiling from a hit, hissing through his teeth.

“ _Ow_ ,” he hissed hatefully at Sam, rubbing his shoulder and narrowing his eyes on the smoking gun. “What the hell, man? Is that how you always treat company?”

“Salt rounds,” Sam said mechanically, still not taking his eyes or weapon off of the company standing unwelcome in the doorway. “So, not a demon. I guess that’s a start.”

The answer scowled at them like a five-year-old being denied candy.

“My name is Milo,” Milo told them impatiently, grumpy now. “I’m not all too proud of the connotations of my angel name, so I’m gonna keep that dirty little secret for a little while longer, if you don’t mind. And I’m just dropping in to let you know your daughter is alive.”

“Grace?” Cas asked.

“Unless you have another lovely ball of sunshine and rage that I need to rescue from your pissy heavenly sibs,” Milo replied sardonically, “then yes, that one.”

“Okay, stop,” Dean called over them all, taking a deep breath. “This is—I’m confused. So you’re an angel with a goofy-ass name who decided to stop in uninvited with information about my daughter.”

“Well, _Grace_ invited me to pop in, if that is any consolation,” Milo replied, shrugging. “Otherwise, yeah, that is pretty much it. You need me to slow it down, Winchester?”

“I’m going to shoot you again if you don’t stop being such a dick,” Sam warned the angel with the patience of a fucking saint.

“Grace is okay, and she wanted me to come down here and let you guys know,” Milo informed them, his voice softening slightly when he seemed to see that now wasn’t the time to act like a stropping toddler. “She told me to tell you something fucking ridiculous, and don’t ever repeat to anyone that these words came out of my mouth, but: ‘ _It’s just Pleasantville_.’”

Dean shocked backwards at the sound of his and Grace’s code for _I’m safe_. Cas made a sound like he had just been stabbed in the stomach and someone was twisting the knife. His hand grasped at Dean’s, nearly cutting off the circulation, but Dean’s had to have been holding on just as tight, so he said nothing, just stared at the unknown angel in front of him, his eyes widening.

Milo’s eyebrows went up when he noticed Dean’s staring. “I assume I passed some kind of test?”

“Where is she?” Dean demanded suddenly, speaking too loud, too frenzied, but this was the closest they had gotten to finding Grace and it felt so temporary. “How fast can I get there?”

“Well, if you keep choking down all that junk food, you’re gonna make it there a few decades before you’re supposed to,” Milo told him, scowling at the fast food wrappers littering the floor next to the overfilled trash can already filled with cheeseburger wrappers. “Good lord, man, how is your heart possibly still beating?”

“She’s in _Heaven_?” Cas demanded loudly.

“Ah,” Milo said, “I probably should have prefaced that a little more.”

“ _Are you telling me that my daughter is dead_?” Cas screeched, horrified, and the words knocked Dean so hard in the chest that he actually had to gasp for air.

Milo threw his hands up like he was trying to stop traffic, his eyes practically bugging out of their sockets. “ _No!_ Shit, shit, no, Castiel, she’s—she’s in Heaven, yeah, and I know that sounds bad, but she kinda escaped capture and ran the Axis Mundi, but everything is alright! She’s nice and alive and vicious but _alive_ , I swear!”

“Okay, wait, wait,” Sam called over all of them, waving his gigantic hands all around until they all turned to look at them, their hysteria fading. “Okay, look, Milo, we’re gonna need you to start from the beginning. Okay?”

“Fine with me,” Milo said, and then turned back to them, taking a deep breath. “Sorry. That ran a little off-script from what I was planning on telling you. Okay, starting over—your daughter was abducted by Zachariah, and he was supposed to bring her into Heaven and keep her in a safe happy place until Michael showed up to ask permission. Well, like I said, your daughter is scary and vicious, so she kicked his ass in midair and he accidentally dropped her into her personal heaven. Since she knows all of the stories you all have told her, she started taking the road less travelled on, so to speak, and she was spotted by a friend of yours and dragged into an old bar that smells like peanuts, whiskey, and intense emotional childhood trauma.”

“The Roadhouse,” Dean whispered softly, his eyes widening.

Milo looked horrified. “How—?”

“Focus,” Sam growled.

“Sorry, Cousin It,” Milo responded, snarky, before turning back to Dean and Cas. “That’s basically the story—your daughter got tugged down the yellow brick road and found herself in Oz. She’s being protected by some guy with a mullet, a Chinese kid, a mother-daughter duo, and a grumpy alcoholic.”

It felt like Dean had just been punched in the stomach. “Ash,” he said softly, “Kevin, Jo, Ellen, and—and Bobby.”

Milo nodded. “Though, from what I’ve seen, she’s been protecting _them_ more than they have _her_.”

For the first time in what felt like a millennia, Dean let out a weak laugh.

“She does that,” Dean replied softly, looking at Cas, seeing the relief he felt blatantly reflected in his expression and in his eyes. “She’s fine, Cas. She’s actually fine.”

Cas took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “We considered that she would escape.”

At the mention, Milo laughed loudly again.

“Oh, it was fucking _fantastic_ ,” Milo told them, wiping tears from his eyes as he continued to laugh hysterically. “She didn’t even know she was fighting him—that’s the best part. She just wailed on him, and then bam—nut shot. You should have seen Zachariah’s _face_.”

Dean felt himself grinning, proud of his little girl for showing that asshole angel what he deserved for thinking he could just come back to life and steal her. It was the least of what the balding dick deserved, but baby steps. “So what else is happening in Heaven?”

“Oh, total anarchy,” Milo told them, rolling his eyes. “Everyone is running around in circles trying to find Grace. It’s gonna explode when Michael steps through those pearly gates again. But that’s where I come in.”

“You’re going to sneak her out,” Cas said, suddenly understanding.

Milo grinned at him and said, “Jailbreak. Right out the back door. Renegades. I figured Grace wouldn’t be opposed.”

“She’ll probably think it’s the best thing ever,” Dean snorted, intoxicated with the relief pumping through his blood like emotional cocaine.

“Does she know about the apocalypse?” Sam asked Milo.

And Dean crashed again.

“I told her,” Milo informed them, nodding. “She took it surprisingly well. I expected at least some tears, but the warrior barely even blinked. You guys raised a damn strong young woman.”

Dean didn’t even realize he was crying until he couldn’t see Cas’s blinding smile anymore. Dean embarrassingly wiped the tears away, wondering how he could have possibly covered so much of the human emotional spectrum in such a short span of time. Dean cleared his throat loudly, straightening his spine. “We need to get her out of there as soon as possible.”

“It’s not that easy,” Milo told him cautiously, making a face. “This apocalypse comes with some strings attached—we don’t have time to go into detail. Basically, Heaven is being shut down, piece by piece. It’s gonna be a massive bitch to find a way out without throwing up some red flags, but I can do it if you give me some time. I’m going to need you to trust me.”

“It would help if you told me who you are,” Cas told him honestly, his eyes unwavering on the angel’s—Dean looked at the other man’s bright blue eyes and wondered if a tall tale Cas had once whispered to him and Grace might actually have a bit of truth in it, that the angel’s bright eyes meant that he was powerful.

Dean wanted to trust him. He did, because Grace trusted him enough to give him the safe word, but he knew enough about angels to know that it wasn’t always as easy as black and white, trust or distrust. Dean glanced at Sam, and they shared a knowing look before they both turned to look at Cas, letting him choose.

“We have never met before, Castiel,” Milo told Cas, sounding drained, but he was smiling. “We have fought together many times—in the times of Biblical devastation, when you laid a siege into Hell for the righteous man, and when you rose against an archangel in a civil war. I fought valiantly for your side in all of those battles, Castiel. I was a loyal soldier. I am a loyal soldier still. I fought for you then, and I will fight for you and your family now.”

“I don’t know who you could possibly be,” Cas told him honestly, sounding flabbergasted. “The angels under my command—I know them all. I do not know you.”

“We never met,” Milo murmured cryptically, “but I was loyal.”

Cas and Milo stared across the space at each other, the silence radioactive.

“Do you trust me?” Milo asked.

It felt like twenty lifetimes passed before Cas took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

“Okay,” Milo said, nodding, and he dipped his head in acknowledgment to the Winchester brothers before grinning. “Looks like I have a jailbreak to plan. I’ll keep in touch.”

And then, like it was all a horrible hallucination, he was gone.

“You trust him,” Cas said, looking at Dean. It wasn’t a question. They both knew it didn’t need to be.

Dean nodded. “Grace gave him a safe word. She wouldn’t have done it if she doubted him. What were all of those riddles he was talking about, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Cas replied, frowning. “I feel like I _do_ know him, but I can’t place him. It may just be a lapse in my memory—human memories are fleeting, and I have millions of years laying virtually unconsidered in the back of my mind.”

To Dean, it was good enough, and Sam nodded his agreement, all of them figuring it was a decent enough excuse, and that, worst case, they could just kill Milo the next time he came along if he seemed a little too distrustful.

Cas reached up and rubbed at his eyes before letting out a halfway-hysterical laugh. “Okay. Grace is okay. She’s safe. She’s with Bobby. I—I didn’t realize how tired I was until now. I think I may be going into shock.”

“I think you’ll survive the night,” Dean replied, smirking down at him. “Get some sleep if you’re tired—I’m still a little wired, but I’ll join you when I can, alright?”

Cas nodded and leaned over and pressed his forehead to Dean’s temple for a beat, whispering softly in airspace that was only theirs that he loved him, and Dean murmured the same back before Cas trudged away, moving like a zombie through shallow water, and Dean waited until he heard the bedroom door shut behind him before he let out the breath he had been holding, feeling like he had just gone a couple of rounds with a hungry rugaru.

“I need a drink,” Dean said, and that was that.

*

Without really having to say anything out loud, Sam and Dean ended up on the side of the house, sitting on the hood of the Impala as they stared up at the stars, a familiar cooler filled with cheap beer balancing next to Dean as he stared blindly up at the pinpricks of light, trying not to remember the horrible night where those stars had become terrible lovely falling angels, their wings burning as they plummeted from the sky. He still remembered the light pounding of Sam’s heart under his hand, where he couldn’t break his grip from because he was so scared, and Dean remembered thinking Cas’s name again and again and again, a silent prayer, a burning terror.

He thought about that night sometimes when he looked up at the stars. Sometimes he wondered if he would blink, and he would still be sitting there, Sam dying under his hands, Castiel the first to fall to the earth, hopelessness and loneliness his only company.

But every time he blinked, he remained here.

It was the little things that made him thankful nowadays.

Sam was fidgety, but it was only understandable, the reason why sending a sharp pang of anxiety through his chest every single time.

It seemed so hard to believe that, with a sky this beautiful, the one considered the Morning Star was out there somewhere, ripping apart cities and families, tearing everything humanity had built apart. Here, the night was peaceful, but he wondered how many people elsewhere wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, because the Lucifer loyalists were out having fun.

It was all too big for them the first time, and it was uncontrollable now. It was a speeding roller coaster heading toward a missing track. There wasn’t even anything they could hold onto for the collision.

Sam let out a long breath, but Dean didn’t look over at him. “We’re getting too old for this,” Sam announced mournfully.

Dean let out a surprised bark of laughter, pausing to take a long sip of his beer before replying. “Hey, I got four long years on you, buddy. I’m so far over the fucking hill I’m in the next county.”

Sam couldn’t help but to laugh. “You are looking a little receding over there, big bro.”

“You leave my hairline alone, bitch,” Dean muttered, but reached up to self-consciously touch at his head anyway, scowling. “I don’t think I ever thought I would get to be this old.”

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly, his eyes going back to the far-off stars. “Me either.”

They sat for a moment, nursing their beers, eyes on the worlds beyond.

“I always thought I would turn out to be dad, if I ever got out,” Sam confessed to Dean easily, laughing sourly to himself. “Back when you were in Purgatory and I didn’t know how—I thought that was it, that I was going to have to decide what to do with my life. I found Amelia, and every day I just—I wondered if I would be like dad, if I would become this overwhelming presence on my kids, if I would raise them to be loyalists. It fucking terrified me. You’d told me before that I was just like dad, and I never knew if you meant it in a good way or a bad way. Both, I guess.”

“You’re not like him,” Dean murmured, “not anymore.”

“I catch myself, sometimes, telling Tyler things that dad said to one of us,” Sam told his brother unsteadily. “More than once I realized only later what I had said. I read a lot of stuff when I was in school about how kids grow up to be just like the person that raised them, and I was terrified it would be dad. It took me a while to realize that dad hadn’t raised me— _you_ had. And I like to think that I’m a damn good dad because of it. I just—I realized I never had the chance to thank you before, didn’t have the guts, but, honestly, Dean—thank you.”

Dean thought he was going to choke on emotion, but he somehow managed to murmur back, “I tried my best with you, Sammy, and I am goddamn proud of what happened. No matter what happened in between all of that, you became you, and you’re the best man I’ve ever met.”

“You too, Dean,” Sam whispered, his voice breaking, and he looked away, swallowing heavily.

“Like you said, Sammy, I raised you—so I think I know why you’re telling me this.”

Sam didn’t say anything.

“You’re going to accept Lucifer in Ty’s place.”

“What else can I do?” Sam despaired, turning to Dean with desperation pulling his face apart—and Dean felt like he was kicked in the chest, because he had seen that face on Sam as a kid, wondering where dad was and why they didn’t have a mom and why nothing was okay. “I can’t let him turn into that, Dean. I can’t fucking imagine a worse torture than that. I was the one that changed the fate last time—I can do it again. I can make it right.”

“You can’t just abandon your family,” Dean replied, choking.

Sam looked at him, broken apart but stronger than he ever had been, and he said, “I will do anything to save my son.”

Dean looked away. “I’m going to say yes to Michael.”

“I had a feeling you would,” Sam replied, and his voice broke and he let out a soft, broken laugh. “God, look at us. We’re messes. It’s like we don’t even know what to run from anymore.”

“I can’t let Grace say yes,” Dean adamantly announced, confident in this one thing. “She’ll die in that fight, and I will _not_ lose her. Saying yes for her—it means she might live. It means that I give her the rest of her life to live the way she wants it, safe and sound, and she will never have to go through this again.”

Dean closed his eyes, and he could still see the stars behind his eyelids.

“I won’t tell Cas,” Sam whispered.

“And I won’t tell Allison.”

“They’re going to hate us.”

Dean opened his eyes, looking at his baby brother and wondering where all of the years had went, and when they had grown up. “Yeah,” Dean whispered, “they will, at first. But they’ll know why we had to do it. They will understand. They might even go as far as to forgive us.”

Sam smiled, but it didn’t hide the tears pouring down his face. “I never would have guessed that this was what it would mean to be a father.”

“It’s been worth every second,” Dean whispered.

“Yeah,” Sam said and then closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “It’s the best thing that I’ve ever done.”

Dean agreed with everything in his heart, knowing that all of the people they saved, all of the things they did, none of them was nearly as amazing as watching his daughter grow up to face the world and angels head on, to calmly accept fate and to fight it the only way she could. Nothing could beat watching Cas teach Grace how to dance, or watching her help him rebuild cars, or seeing the big grin on her face when she got into Princeton. Dean Winchester had done nothing as wonderful as raising his little girl into being the beautiful, fearless, kind young woman that she turned out to be.

He would make all of his choices again and again if it meant that he would always end up here.

Sam and Dean sat in an understanding silence, staring up at the stars, never before having been as strong of brothers as they were in that moment.


	8. Explaining

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“Well,” Grace said slowly, and then laughed nervously. “This is awkward, isn’t it?”

“You said your last name is Starkey,” Kevin stated obviously.

“I lied,” Grace deadpanned.

“Well, _obviously_ ,” Kevin curtly responded, and then sharply looked away. “How are you so calm about this?”

“I’ve always known my last name,” Grace replied, confused.

Kevin threw his hands up and made an irritated sound before saying, aghast, “About the apocalypse, Grace. How are you so calm about an angel using your body to rain down holy retribution?”

“Oh,” Grace said lamely. “That.”

She paused to think about it, but only ended up shrugging.

“Kind of comes with the name,” she told him honestly, and then laughed despite herself.

“So you’re Dean’s kid?” Ellen asked, looking at Grace carefully. “Shoulda known—you’re just like him. And don’t be takin’ that as too much of a compliment, either.”

“You forgot to mention how I’m just as pretty as him,” Grace said, and smirked.

Jo let out a startled laugh. “I don’t know how none of us realized who you were, with that attitude.”

“I did,” Bobby grunted gruffly, rolling his eyes when they all turned back to look at him in surprise. “Don’t be givin’ me that look—it’s not exactly subtle how hard the child was hit with the Dean Winchester genetics stick. Not my fault all you idjits can’t open your eyes.”

Ash suddenly snorted so loud that Grace looked over only to make sure he still had a nose. “Your dad named you after somethin’ angelic,” Ash said, and then rolled his eyes. “The irony is not lost.”

“It’s a bit of an inside joke,” Grace said, and then rolled her eyes.

“So, how is he?” Jo asked timidly with a kind smile. “How are they doing?”

Grace paused before sinking gracefully to the floor, gesturing for everyone to follow her lead. “If you’re gonna give me the third degree, we might as well take a seat. I have a feeling this is going to take a while, and my knees are still a little shaky over the specifics of my arrival here.”

Jo paused before sinking down to the ground just to the side of her, sending her a big grin. Kevin reluctantly joined Grace on her other side while Ellen sat with Jo, and Bobby grumbled before lowering himself to their level, sitting awkwardly like no one ever taught him the virtue of the ole crisscross-applesauce.

Ash sat at the bar and pulled out a twelve pack. Grace figured that was his cue that he was still listening.

“I told you all before that the Winchesters are domestic, and I wasn’t kidding,” Grace enlightened them, grinning. “Sammy’s off being some animal vigilante in Palo Alto, while I hail from the glorious town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.” Grace beamed at Bobby when he looked surprised. “After the gates closed and my fam was practically unemployed, they went and rebuilt the old Singer house, and Dean stayed when Sam ventured out to where it all started, where he fell for a sexy young thing and settled down. So, I suppose, Dean’s good. Probably not right now, since I’m off the grid and all, but I’m sure he’ll stop pissing his panties when Milo tells him the safe word.”

“I’m sure your dad is gonna be happy you inexplicably trust a mysterious blue-eyed, dark-haired angel,” Jo teased her, but Grace burst out into hysterical laughter, nearly doubling over.

“Oh God,” Grace giggled, rolling her eyes. “He’s gonna skin me alive. But not before he buries Milo in the backyard.”

Jo laughed. “I could totally see him being super overprotective.”

“It’s _stifling_. If he even smells a hint of testosterone in the air around me, he’s scouring the neighborhood with a gun,” Grace told her, and she saw Ellen smirk despite herself.

“So what’re they up to?” Bobby asked, leaning forward. “Other than tryin’ to patch up the world again, apparently.”

“Sam works for some goofy hippie organization that’s all about saving dogs,” Grace said, and then sobered. “No, but really, it’s amazing the things Sam has done for the community. He always believed he wouldn’t be able to give back to the world what he had taken from it, but he’s doing a damn good job at trying. My dad’s proud of him, but he’d never tell him. God forbid a Winchester shows feelings, you know? And my dad—Dean’s got Singer Auto up and running. Fixes cars locally, and buys old junkers from people and makes them into million-dollar beauties and sells them to collectors. That way, he doesn’t have to go far from home. I could always tell he didn’t want to have me living on the road like he did, so he gave me a permanent home.”

Grace grinned and added, “Sioux Falls is the only home I have ever known—just like my dad.”

Bobby looked down at his hands long enough to compose himself. Grace felt a rush of fondness for the man her father described as the only man that had ever acted like a father to him. He was as good as her grandfather, and every time she looked at him there was a rush of secondhand affection from all of the stories told of him, of all of the things she has been told is wonderful about him.

“So they don’t live in the bunker anymore?” Kevin asked, and she felt like she had been stabbed—Dean had taken her to the bunker several times but, every single time, his eyes held too long on the place where Kevin Tran had died.

“No,” Grace admitted slowly, “but it’s still theirs. They’re still the only real remaining legacies of the Men of Letters. Actually, technically, Ty and I are. Oh, _hell_ yeah. I’m gonna throw a pizza-and-reading party there once this mess blows over.”

“Ty?” Jo asked.

“Oh, Ty’s my baby cousin. He’s four years younger than—”

Grace froze.

“Oh,” Jo said, and her face crumpled in understanding.

Grace had known that Tyler would be the Lucifer vessel because that’s the way it worked. She was descended from Cain, and Ty was on the branch of the family tree that came from Abel. Milo had announced clearly that it would be all down to Grace and Ty. But it hadn’t hit her that the kid she saw as her baby brother was going to be standing against her as Satan himself in an epic fight to the death. She didn’t realize that it would be _Ty_ that she would be fighting, even if Lucifer was in total control. She somehow didn’t take into consideration that this would all end with either Grace standing over Tyler with a bloody knife, or he would be standing over _her_ , and the world would burn.

To stop Lucifer from winning, she was going to have to kill Tyler. Whether she was in control or not when it happened didn’t matter. She suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“He’s not even fifteen yet,” Grace whimpered, her hands shaking. “I’m going to have to kill him before his fifteenth birthday.”

“Grace, it’s gonna be fine, sweetheart,” Ellen suddenly cooed, her motherly instincts coming out of nowhere, and she leaned in front of Jo in order to put her hand over one of Grace’s. Grace looked up at her, feeling petrified. “Cross that bridge when you get there, honey. It’s not gonna be _you_. You might not even know it’s happenin’.”

“That doesn’t change that he’s going to die by my hand,” Grace whispered, closing her eyes. “He’s practically my baby brother, and I’m going to _slaughter_ him. I taught him how to ride a bike without training wheels when he was four, and I got up early to make him breakfast every day the summer he stayed with us when he was six, and I gave him pointers on how to woo girls when he was twelve, and I’m going to end his life because that’s what _God_ wants me to do? How is that right and just? How is that God’s _will_?”

She didn’t expect it, but the words of comfort came from Kevin Tran. He reached over and put his hand awkwardly on her back, and she turned to look at him without bothering to hide her surprise. Kevin hesitated for a second before he took a deep breath, and he shook his head at her.

“I was a prophet once,” Kevin reminded her. “I didn’t want to be, but I had to, because that was the way life chose it to be. I could read the word of God, so I was in the line of fire. I know a little bit about being chosen for a fate you don’t want and getting entirely screwed over by it. It sucks, okay? I won’t lie. It’s terrible. But maybe it’s not God being cruel, okay? Maybe it’s just another plan to test human nature. And you don’t have to like it, but you live through it anyway, like you do with anything else bad that happens. You get through it, and you move on. You can’t fall apart before it’s all started. You’ve been so strong this entire time, and you don’t have to push it down, but you have to listen to Ellen when she tells you to cross that bridge when you get there. A million more things are going to happen in between now and your curtain call, alright? Worry about getting out of here first. Worry about how pissy your dad is going to be over the Milo thing.” Grace let out a choked laugh, and he squeezed her shoulder. “You’ll be alright, Grace, even if you won’t be. You’ve got your dad and uncle to take care of you downstairs, and you’ve got us up here. No matter what the ending is, try to make the most of it, alright?”

Grace nodded, sniffling, before she smirked and said with sarcasm weakened by worry, “Didn’t know Asians were that smart, Tran. You’ve surprised me.”

Kevin laughed and pushed her away gently, rolling his eyes. “You’ll be fine, Grace. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’ll be fine.”

“Alright, my breakdown is over,” Grace announced after a deep breath, shaking it off and focusing on what is important, because that’s the only way she’s going to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She took another deep breath for good measure and smirked around at everyone who was looking at her, like they were expecting another breakdown. “Alright. We were talking about the gangly kid in California. Right. I’m pretty close to Tyler. It’s hard not to be when the kid loses his first tooth and then spits it at you.” Grace laughed, and she saw Jo clap her hands over her mouth to muffle a giggle.

“Sam got married?” Ellen prompted softly, edging her away from falling back into despair, and Grace offered her a kind, thankful smile as she nodded.

“Sure did. Allison—she’s great. She’s a professor at Stanford, teaches all sorts of stuff about the importance of literature in law and law in literature. Sam was immediately head over heels for the poor girl. She’s amazing. Not raised as a hunter, and not really interested in hunting, but she’s ruthless, man. It’s terrifying. One second she’s a nice mom with candy in her purse, the next she’s stabbing a vampire in the throat with one of her high heels. I’m also pretty sure she’s a saint because she puts up with Sam having five big dogs running around her meticulous house.”

“Cats are superior,” Ash chimed in from the bar, working on his fourth brewski.

“I agree. But, what can you do? The long-haired freak is all about man’s best friend.”

“How about Castiel?” Jo asked completely out of the blue.

Grace squinted at her. “What do you mean?”

“Is he still hangin’ around?” she asked, shrugging. “Ash said there was a whole bunch of drama with him when they closed the gates, and he had to turn to humanity for good. I’ve been curious.”

“Of _course_ he’s still hanging around,” Grace said in a _duh_ tone, forgetting herself for a minute. “He’s completely adapted to humanity, and totally obsessed with bees. He also likes to wash dishes, like _a lot_ , which Dean thinks is really weird but doesn’t question it.”

“What happened to your mom?” Jo asked, and then winced. “If you don’t mind me asking. You mentioned before that you don’t have one.”

“I don’t,” Grace said. “My biological mom is living with a husband down in Arizona. I don’t really see her, because it doesn’t really matter. It’s, uh—complicated. Okay, uh—my biological mom is Allison’s sister, Adrianna.”

A moment of silence, and then Jo howled with laughter. “You’re _joking_. Don’t tell me they met at a family reunion, I’ll _piss_ myself.”

“It was before Dean knew Sam had met Allison,” Grace explained, laughing. “It’s complicated, and kind of weird. Everyone thinks I’m Sam and Allison’s, since I look so much like her. Since I’m, like, half her family. Yeah, it’s weird. I’ll explain a little more later.”

“I’ve _so_ heard enough,” Jo giggled, her eyes shining with hysterical tears. “Oh, God, this all _screams_ Dean Winchester.”

Grace smiled at her good-naturedly, letting her believe from what she had told them what Jo wished to take from it.

Grace wasn’t entirely sure if Dean would want her outing him to his dead friends and family, so she figured she might as well lie through the art of omission than do something that her father might have preferred her not to have taken into her own hands down the line.

So she didn’t tell them Adrianna was sweet, a mother of three other kids now. She didn’t tell them that Adrianna was a surrogate, and nothing more. She let them believe she was a one-night stand gone wrong, a woman who didn’t want Grace, and Dean took her. She let them believe what they wanted to believe from it, and no harm would come to it.

Until later, when her dad wandered into Heaven holding hands with a dude.

 “Grace?” Ellen called, and Grace looked up at her. “I was wondering why you thought you had to keep it to yourself, that you’re Dean Winchester’s kid.”

Grace winced. “I, uh, figured you guys might not want to know, seeing as my dad’s the reason why all of you are dead.”

She wasn’t sure what reaction she expected, but it definitely wasn’t for stoic Ellen Harvelle to dramatically roll her eyes. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve all long since forgiven your daddy for anythin’ he did. Sam, too. We all died from choices we made, whether good ones or bad ones, and it’s useless to blame one person for it when you’ve had years to think about it.”

Grace smiled softly at all of them, blinking back tears. “You have no idea how much that will mean to him,” she told them softly, wondering what expression would be on her dad’s face, wondering how Dean would react when she told him that the people who loved him had forgiven him for all the wrong he had done.

Her mental picture suddenly shattered when Jo nudged her in the arm, wagging her eyebrows. “I had the _biggest_ crush on your dad,” Jo teased her, sighing dreamily. “I was practically in love with the guy. He even kissed me once. It was _awesome_.”

Grace, stricken, made a sound of horrified protest that sent the entire room in raucous laughter.

Milo took that moment to enter, appearing behind Jo, frowning at them.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded, but Jo, Kevin, and Ash ignored him, still shaking with laughter. Grace got to her feet to face Milo, and he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at her. “I’m not staying if you guys are going to be loud.”

Grace’s eyebrows shot up. “Who pissed in your Cheerios, princess?”

“Your uncle shot me,” Milo replied curtly, reaching up and rubbing at his shoulder even though it obviously hadn’t hurt him at all and it all was perfectly healed already. Grace smiled at him sweetly, her entire body humming with sarcastic intent.

“My, my,” Grace purred. “You must have really pissed him off—Sammy’s gotten pacifistic in his old age.”

Milo shot her a dark look before demanding, “You want me to tell you what happened or not?”

“You can’t seriously be this angry because my uncle pumped you full of salt and lead,” Grace noted aloud, tilting her head at him curiously. “Something else happened, didn’t it?”

Milo sighed delicately. “Got harassed by some angels walking my way back through the pearly gates. I hate the burden of fame.”

“Boohoo, angel,” Grace told him, snorting. “So, did Dean trust you?”

“He seemed to after the Pleasantville test, yes,” Milo replied, shrugging. “Sam seemed impartial. Castiel just squinted at me a lot.”

“He does that,” Grace offered understandingly.

“He eventually gave me the green light,” Milo shared. “Guess he figured that I was the easiest way to get you back with your feet on the ground. So all lights are go. But you’re gonna need to give me a couple of days—like I said, I was harassed coming in, and that doesn’t normally happen. That means that Zachariah has eyes on the entrance and exits, so I’m going to have to do some thinking on how to trip him up for just long enough. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Grace urged him, rolling her eyes. “You’re helping me. We’re pretty much on your time.”

Milo shrugged and glanced around and then down, frowning. “Why are you all on the floor?”

They were saved—technically speaking—from gifting him with a response when the door to the Roadhouse suddenly flew open, and the man passing through it began speaking: “Do you know what’s happening with the angel unrest? It took me a while to shake them, it looked like—”

The man paused, obviously confused as to why he was finding the people he was looking for on the floor. The people on the floor, meanwhile, didn’t help with his confusion as they stared up at him, their faces contorting into horror. And then, like a death sentence, they all looked from the man to Grace.

Grace stared at the man, blindsided, shakily breathing in.

The man turned his attention to where the rest of the Roadhouse crew was looking, and, for the first time in her life, Grace looked into the eyes of John Winchester.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Three more nights passed with no word from Milo, so the Winchester clan had just reverted back into looking for answers in books and other resources, adding a new pair of eyes in the form of Tyler, who was just as upset with Grace’s disappearance as the rest of them and had thrown himself into finding a way to get out of the apocalypse, the poor young kid obviously worried about his newfound fate but handling it like a champ, not letting it slow him down and not making him go faster, either.

On the fourth night, Sam’s side of the family tree had passed out sleeping in various rooms of the house, leaving Dean and Cas to silence in the living room. Cas had a book written in Latin on his lap, fidgeting with Grace’s favorite crochet blanket between his fingers as his eyes scanned the page. Dean, however, was barely holding onto consciousness, and he was safely pressed and leaning against Castiel, Dean’s eyes becoming harder and harder to open again every time he blinked.

Turns out that there is no wakeup call quite like an archangel with a sweet tooth.

“Howdy, life partners,” Gabriel cawed as he appeared out of nowhere, and Dean jerked off of Cas’s shoulder so fast that he would have flipped straight off of the couch if the back had been cut any lower. Cas looked up from his book, his eyes wide and startled, his hands stilling their anxious motion against the blanket.

“I’m not a fan of these new house calls,” Dean growled at Gabriel, narrowing his eyes. “Can’t you at least give a man a warning?”

“No,” Gabriel replied simply, grinning sickly sweetly. “No matter how easily I could pop in here whenever I damn well please to coo at the pretty couple and gush about how adorably sappy your love story is, I’d prefer to not bother. And, in fact, this will be the last time you have to see my face forever, if I have anything to say about it. I just figured I would give you two a little heads up on the new Heaven drama.”

“Has something happened?” Cas demanded, standing. “Is Grace okay?”

“This is why I wouldn’t want to have kids,” Gabriel sighed. “It’s like they suck out the rest of your brain in the delivery room or something. Don’t you think of anything other than that lovely bundle of sexy sass?”

Dean barred his teeth at the angel. Gabriel burst into giggles, grinning.

“Too easy, Winchester,” Gabriel laughing, shaking his head as he grinned. “Your daughter is currently upstairs about to have an ugly dramatic family feud, if you want me to be entirely honest, but it’s nothing to worry about down here. As for if something happened—that’s a big old yes. Angels are blowing shit up all over Heaven, throwing a little tantrum for their daddy. The higher-ranking angels won’t be able to control them for much longer, and Michael will soon have to step in and reinforce the order. However, the second Michael touches Heaven, guess what happens.”

Dean and Cas were not in the mood for a guessing game.

Gabriel rolled his eyes before revealing to them, “Michael’s gonna sense his rightful vessel like a Saint Bernard, and Grace’ll be captured faster than you can say ‘cockatoo’. I hope you bozos have a glorious plan.”

“An angel is going to smuggle Grace out of Heaven,” Cas replied.

Gabriel groaned. “I said _glorious_ , not suicidal. What angel?”

“He said he’s going by Milo,” Dean told Gabriel, not trusting the bastard farther than he could throw him, but he was willing to at least attempt to have an ally if that meant he wouldn’t have to see the weirdo’s face again. Gabriel’s eyes widened the moment the name seemed to sink in, and he looked at the couple before him, looking surprised. And then he burst into hysterical giggles.

“ _Milo_ ,” Gabriel said, and then laughed some more. “ _Milo_ is helping you. Oh, good lord, this is just too good. You Winchesters are always a bundle of laughs, especially if you don’t try to be.”

Dean scowled. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s certainly powerful enough to rescue your daughter,” Gabriel told them, not answering the question, still grinning gleefully. He looked like someone had just given him the keys to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as a Christmas present. “Milo is—no, you know what, I’m gonna let you both figure out this little secret on your own. I want _him_ to tell you. _Milo_ —oh, shit, this just made my day _so_ much better.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Fuck no,” Gabriel said, “but that doesn’t mean _you_ shouldn’t. Just means I know things.”

“Can we not play mind games?” Dean demanded, irritated. “I’m starting to think being a giant asshole is just a deep-rooted piece of your personality.”

Gabriel shrugged. “I should probably get going anyway—got some errands to run before the big day. Good luck with the apocalypse and all that.” Gabriel looked between Dean and Cas with a big grin. “One last thing before I go—you two can definitely trust Milo with Grace’s life, but you should definitely be overprotective papas when it comes to Milo’s hold over Grace’s heart. Food for thought. Later.”

He left them with more questions than they had answers, but Gabriel was true to his word—they never saw him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm two days into recovery from surgery, so sorry if there are some grammar problems and things.
> 
> My tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> Check out my new ficlit? "Shatter Me": http://archiveofourown.org/works/1582640


	9. Greeting

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“Who are you two?” John Winchester asked curiously, his eyes cutting in between Grace and Milo. Grace automatically straightened her spine, her chin tilting up, and she felt the emotion leave her face as she became a soldier, her father’s haunted eyes when he spoke of the man who raised him on the road coming to mind like a devil on her shoulder, whispering into her ear reminders of the way her father’s face transforms whenever John Winchester’s name was mentioned.

Milo looked over at Grace, his eyes wide, but she offered no emotional response.

“I should probably get started,” Milo said slowly, not answering John’s question, frowning worriedly down at her. “Are you going to be okay?”

The show of kindness from a complete stranger was like a dagger to the stomach, and Grace only managed to nod tensely. He looked into her eyes for a moment before nodding back, offering her a small smile of encouragement and reassurance before he disappeared. Grace didn’t miss the way John flinched, obviously uneasy at the thought of angels.

Her stomach clenched in residual fear from a lifetime of avoiding all mention of the man before her. She felt like she should turn around and run, but there was nowhere for her to go.

“You’re John Winchester, aren’t you?” Grace asked guardedly.

Bobby seemed to notice her drastic change in demeanor. He sent her a questioning glance that she didn’t return because she was too busy staring down the burly and brutal John Winchester, trying to find her voice.

“I am.” John paused, seeming a little bewildered by her tone. “Are you an angel, too, then?” he added, his eyebrows going up, his eyes untrusting.

Something shattered in her, and it spilled out a lifetime of her father’s fear toward this man.

“Actually, my name is Grace Winchester,” Grace told him dispassionately, “so I guess that makes me your granddaughter.”

John’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open like he was about to ask a question but nothing came, and his head snapped to look at Bobby as if he was expecting the man to tell him Grace was lying to him. A spark of irritation flickered under her skin as John turned back to her, appraising her curiously, and she couldn’t help but to feel like she was on display.

The Roadhouse crew, when they first took a good look at her, felt like they were measuring a threat, and then like they were wondering what set of circumstances got her to this point. When John looked at her, she felt like he was looking through a window at a shop, wondering if anything inside was worth taking a good look at.

She thought of how his last words to Dean had been a warning that if he couldn’t save Sam, he would have to kill him, and she suddenly more than anything wanted to attack this man.

But she would not. She would hold her ground, and she would remember her place, and she would breathe.

“How long has it been, then?” John demanded, surprised, looking at Grace with a new curious desperation, and Grace couldn’t help to be a little gratified that he at least seemed to care that he had grandchildren running around somewhere. But Grace still had a little bit of a problem with her temper, despite the lessons in patience and politeness, so she couldn’t stop her mouth from twisting and for the words to come out with an edge sharper than a blade.

“Since you’ve last seen your kids?” Grace asked for clarification and shrugged before John could respond. “Probably about thirty years since you last saw them after crawling out of Hell. Somewhere around there.”

“And how many since the gates closed?”

“Twenty-two, twenty-three. I’m eighteen, in case you’re wondering. And an only child.”

John blinked, surprised, and asked, “What happened to get you here?”

“Your bloodline to the angels,” Grace told him easily, smiling condescendingly. Something sparked in his eyes like he saw the negative emotion fueling her, but he persisted anyway, a guard or two going up behind his emotions as well, and, to Grace, it felt like they were preparing for war.

Grace caught Ellen and Bobby glancing at each other, both of them looking surprised and uneasy. Kevin looked like he would like to evaporate through the floorboards. She couldn’t see Jo and Ash from where she was standing, staring down John Winchester, but she was sure that they would be edging their way from the room, trying to sneak away from something so obviously about to go wrong.

“So why are you here, in my little slice of Heaven?” Grace asked, gesturing around her. “I didn’t even know you knew about this place. You missed your sons when they passed through a couple of decades ago, by the way.”

“I had some questions,” John said casually, like he was talking to a dangerous stranger, “about the angel presence.”

“Right, right. They have a bit of a Winchester vendetta, believe it or not. They were probably keeping an eye on you, making sure you weren’t in on the new plans.”

“New plans?” John demanded, his eyebrows rising to show his interest. “What new plans?”

Grace shrugged. “Classified,” she lied, and looked him straight in the eye, the defiance palpable.

She heard Bobby, very softly, mutter, “Oh, _hell_.”

John bristled. Grace knew she was starting it, that she was poking a bear, but she couldn’t stop, not when she felt like letting down her guard would only bring her to a level that could be swept up in John Winchester. She had never met him, and he had been dead over a decade longer that she had even been alive, so she had no personal connections, no expectations from her family to play nice. All she had was what she had learned over the years, and she didn’t like even a word of what she had learned about the man.

She felt no qualms about treating him as any other person who had manipulated and emotionally abused his sons. She treated him like a stranger because she had no reason to treat him with the respect of a grandfather.

He was her grandfather, biologically. But he was her grandfather in the same way Adrianna was her mother—in their DNA, yes, but neither of them had left a lasting imprint on her life. They were connected with a name, but they had no relationship to be treasured.

She owed nothing much more to this man than the little care he offered Dean and Sam over the course of their childhood and early adult life. She owed him only a little, because it was a man who did care for his sons, but in all of the wrong ways. This was a man who claimed he wanted things for his sons that he could have easily given them if he hadn’t been so crazed and selfish.

She couldn’t respect someone who had denied his children the world. She didn’t have it in her.

And, apparently, it showed.

“Classified, huh?” John asked, shuffling, his eyes narrowing on Grace, and she held herself both defensively and carelessly, not smiling or smirking, but just looking at him neutrally, like any other stranger. His hand twitched, and it reminded her remarkably like an automatic move toward a weapon. “So what really happened—Grace, is it? What happened that killed you?”

“Something amazing, I guess,” Grace said, “since I’m not dead.”

“Do you treat everyone you meet like this?” John finally demanded, his tone angry and annoyed, taking a step in that direction, the step with the potential to send Grace off the deep end. “Or is there something I did that pissed you off?”

“Pass,” Grace said, offering no emotion.

John Winchester stared at her for a long moment, scowling, just staring at her like his gaze would be enough to break her, but Grace was tougher than that, and she didn’t budge. He straightened up, but she wasn’t intimidated, and his hands curled into angry fists, and she wondered how many of those fists he used to swing at his eldest child because, even if Dean never said it to be true, she couldn’t help but to believe that more happened in his failures than he was willing to let others know.

Grace wondered how many hits Dean had taken to save Sam from the same, and it only fueled her anger.

John Winchester was an opposing force, a natural disaster. But Grace was fiercer because she had something to prove.

He stared down at her, his dark eyes barely a shadow of his sons’, before he shook his head, smirking darkly, and he slumped again, regarding her in that same cavalier manner.

“You must be Sam’s kid,” John said, “to have that kind of defiance.”

Grace had wanted to keep her calm.

She exploded.

“What a betraying existence you must live, then,” Grace replied stormily, “if you think your good little soldier couldn’t raise a child to _hate_ you.”

She heard shuffling in the background, like Bobby or Ellen was about to step in, but she had a feeling that they wouldn’t know how. She and John were past the point of no return—they had crossed the lines of their anger, and they were going to follow them until the end, no matter where it was, because there was nothing more insulting to her than to have to think being a child of Sam Winchester’s is something to be looked down upon for.

She thought about all of the things Dean had protected Sam from throughout the entirety of his life, and Grace couldn’t help to feel sorry for a man who would never truly know his sons the way they deserve to be known.

John’s jaw was clenched tight. She half expected his teeth to shatter under the pressure.

“What are you so angry at me for?” John demanded harshly, a man condensed of duty and hate. “Something Dean told you, I assume?”

“He didn’t have to _tell_ me anything,” Grace told him, narrowing her eyes. “I haven’t heard him even mention your name since I did a genealogy project in fourth grade, and do you want to know why? It’s because, in my house, uttering your name is the _root of all sin_.”

It turns out that, if there is one way to piss John Winchester off, that was it.

She felt the flames of his hellfire, of his anger. She felt it pass over her skin like the fury of a dragon’s bite, and she would have flinched if she were anyone other than a Winchester, if she was even remotely afraid of the man before her. She stood squarely in her spot, watching the fire in his eyes, knowing exactly now how she could destroy him piece by piece, because her dads had both taught her everything about how to read people, and how to ruin them.

She wanted to argue. She wanted to fight with him. Somehow, like Sam, she was so outwardly defiant toward this man, and she assumed it was because she felt the bullshit behind every single word that came out of his mouth.

She knew what to say that would push him entirely over the edge. So she said it.

“When Dean mentions his dad, I know for a fact that he isn’t talking about you,” Grace told John confidently, her eyes flashing. “Bobby Singer was always more of a father to him than you ever were.”

She heard Bobby suck in a surprised breath moments before John Winchester lost it.

“I gave those boys everything!” John shouted, practically growling the words through his teeth, and everyone else flinched when his voice rose but Grace, who just stood in the middle of the chaos and watched as a few perfectly-placed words brought this grown man’s mental state to its knees. “I did the best I could to give them what they wanted. I tried my best, and they went on to do something to be proud of, and I was proud. I have always been proud of them. So don’t you dare tell me that I am less of a father to them just because I wasn’t around or because I didn’t do the right thing, because I did right by those boys.”

Grace was quiet for a long, deadly moment. The whole room hung in static silence.

“You made both of your children so afraid of becoming you that they initially didn’t want to have children of their own,” Grace murmured. “Congratulations on father of the century, John.”

For a split second, she thought he was going to hit her. And Jo must have, too, because she made a startled sound when John flinched. Grace didn’t move.

“You must have been one abusive asshole, John Winchester.”

“You don’t know anything,” John growled at her, but he looked paler, and his eyes shone with anger and spite that a million years in Heaven would never be able to burn out of him.

Grace looked up at him and said through her teeth, “I’m sure I don’t need to.”

His eyes flashed but, despite it all, he managed to keep his calm enough that only his voice grated with his anger when he said, “Dean must have gone all out in his adult life, huh? Probably shacked up somewhere with some useless office job and trophy wife, having given up on the life that he apparently hated so much?”

If the first response was an explosion, then the second was nuclear.

“You’re wrong,” Grace whispered.

The soft response jarred John. He blinked, leaning back, like he had expected her to break but hadn’t expected this. She felt the weight of a million stares as she straightened her back, her fists tightening convulsively at her sides as her jaw clenched, blind stubbornness giving her the strength she needed.

“You’re _wrong_ ,” Grace said, louder, stronger, her voice reaching to every corner of the room as she stood up to the man who was the first to ruin her father. “Dean didn’t give up _anything_ —not the life, not the car, not the music, not even your fucking _journal_. No. Instead, he did everything that you claimed you _couldn’t_ do. My dad settled down with a house and a family and a job, and he continued to hunt even then, all while managing to balance a family safely in between it all, proving that everything you believed in about what you could have done in your sons’ childhood was nothing but a self-conceived _lie_. Dean did everything you claimed you couldn’t do, because he was stronger than you, and _braver_. He saw what he could have and, even if he thought he didn’t deserve a fucking minute of it, he reached out and grabbed it, and he was finally fucking _happy_.”

She took a step closer to John, burning with loathing.

“And for the record,” Grace snarled, “no, Dean does _not_ have a trophy wife—he has an ex-angelic beekeeping _husband_!”

It wasn’t until the room fell deathly silent that she realized she said too much, but it was too late and she couldn’t reach into the air and grab back the words now—and she realized that she didn’t want to. There was nothing more rewarding in that moment to see John’s expression, how he looked like he had been clocked hard in the temple by a frying pan, and there was little more satisfying than how he took a stumbling step back, so caught off guard that his equilibrium was even thrown off.

Grace stared him down, stared through his shock, and stood firm.

“When I was a kid,” Grace continued, her voice shaking with homesickness and rage, “Dean taught me how to cook, and how to fix cars, and how to make things out of whatever resources I had. He taught me how to hunt, and how to fight, and how to protect myself, but he was the one that never let me lose sight of the real world in the rearview mirror. He kept me on track to bigger and better things, and now I’m out of MENSA and heading off to Princeton next fall with a full ride if I want it. He kept me grounded, but he let me go in whatever direction I wanted with all of the love and support in the world, and that is what makes him the best dad in the world.

“Castiel? He told me the stories of the Winchester brothers, and he helped me understand what it means to be a hero. He taught me kindness, and patience. He taught me the pulls of Heaven, and the pulls of Hell. He taught me the worth of humanity, and he taught me how to read the stars. He even taught me how to dance.”

Grace swallowed past the emotion in her throat before looking John Winchester in the eye and saying, “My dads taught me love and how to love. You taught your sons revenge, killing, hatred, and obedience. And, for that, I am angry that they seem to have forgiven you—even if they have not forgotten.”

Grace took a step away from John, just one solid step backwards, and it practically made the tension start to hum like an exposed electrical wire. John looked at her, his face bright red, a mixture of emotions on his face that ranged everywhere from sorrow to ire to disappointment, emotions that Grace didn’t know what they corresponded with in her rant, but she watched them chase each other across the man’s face, her words probably bringing his mind into an epic spin of information and emotion and disbelief. It wasn’t until he was taking a firm step away from her as well that she could practically hear her voice echoing back to her off of the walls, saying, _husband_.

She probably should have considered the explosion that would come around with that word. Just one word had the power to tear everything she had built here apart.

One last lie out in the open.

“I’ve heard enough,” John Winchester growled through his teeth, and all Grace could do was watch in an eerie silence as he turned and stormed away, slamming the door of the Roadhouse shut behind him. In the silence, Grace could hear the door vibrating on its hinges from the force, and she listened until the sound wandered into nothing.

She stood there, staring at the closed door, wondering if she would ever see John Winchester again.

She couldn’t help but to think that she would apologize.

Grace was spiraling into an endless abyss of anger and betrayal and shame and guilt and self-loathing and sorrow, because if her bias and her temper would have been in better condition, she would have never lashed out at John. She would have never blamed him for the things he did, because everyone deserves a second chance, and that was something she should have learned through her fathers by now. She should have never let her personal judgment on the man he had been stop him from being a man he could have been.

She didn’t stop blaming herself until she felt a hand come down onto her shoulder, and she shocked away from it, not having remembered that her and John had an audience.

Bobby’s hand hovered uncertainly in the air between them, cautious as if he was unsure if she was going to strike at him, but she had temporarily lost all the strength in her arms. She looked around at everyone still standing where they had been before, watching her like they were waiting for her to either vomit or scream, and she kind of felt like doing both but she knew she had to be stronger than that. She took a deep breath, blinking a couple of times to orient herself, before she turned to look at Bobby, feeling herself relaxing already because this was the man that deserved to be considered her family.

John Winchester is a man, and she should have respected that, but she knew that, if he were still alive, he would have been estranged from her family. Bobby, however, would come over every Sunday for barbeque and football.

“Oh shit,” Grace said. “I just outted my dad.”

Bobby looked at her, stunned, before bursting into chuckles. It seemed to break the tense in the room like a hammer to a sheet of ice, because suddenly everyone was laughing, even Grace, and even if they didn’t know why, it was better than the same damn silence that was lingering over them like a betrayal. Grace shook her head, reaching up and rubbing her face, before groaning.

“My dad is going to kill me,” she groaned before laughing despite herself. “By the way, everyone, I have two dads. Hope that’s cool.”

“Dean’s gay for Cas,” Kevin said, sounding like he was having some kind of stress response, and he just slowly shook his head. “How the hell did I not guess that?”

“Technically, Dean’s bisexual,” Grace corrected kindly, “but, really, for all intents and purposes, he _is_ married to a man, so, gay.”

“And _Castiel_ ,” Jo gasped, looking a mix between insanely entertained and mildly horrified. “The guy was practically a robot in my day. I . . . No, you know what? Now that you’ve said it, I can totally see it. They had a vibe—not really a gay-pride-parade kind of vibe, but an it’s-complicated vibe. Huh.”

“As long as he’s happy,” Ellen commented, still looking taken aback by the series of events, but offering a solid nod to Grace as if it was she personally who pushed her parents into becoming an item.

Jo just laughed again, slightly hysterical, and then glided over to nudge Grace in the shoulder.

“I wish you had a picture so bad,” Jo sighed, shaking her head. “I want to see them in their old age. I feel like they would make a sickly adorable couple. Please tell me they bicker over stupid shit like what channel the television is on and what kind of milk they should get.”

Grace just rolled her eyes.

Ash muttered something about Dean getting some that Grace elected to ignore for the sake of her sanity, and she was halfway to praying to any almighty power that would listen to thank them for making this run so smoothly before she remembered that there was only one opinion that mattered the most, way above the rest of them, and Grace turned to stare at Bobby Singer with wide eyes, her stomach churning as she hoped to see anything other than disappointment or shame.

She knew enough of the hatred that her dads got. Even if the world was slightly more tolerant, they still weren’t tolerant enough, and she had seen more than one heart get broken because humans couldn’t accept that other people could also be human in a different way. Grace didn’t want to have to go back and tell her dad stories of this and see the color leave his face when she tried to lie about Bobby’s reaction, because Dean Winchester could always tell when his daughter lied.

She looked at Bobby, and he was beaming.

The smile transformed the man’s face. He went from gruff and grumpy to lively, and Grace blinked in the intensity of the stare directed at her. Bobby let out a laugh, just one, as if hysterical, before he shook his head incredulously.

“Those idjits,” Bobby muttered fondly before sweeping forward and pulling Grace into a backbreaking hug, smelling of whiskey and gasoline and gun powder, and Grace sunk into the embrace, clutching him close, silently thanking him for loving his adopted sons in a way their own father did not.

Grace had always learned to cherish family over everything else. And right then, standing in the middle of the Roadhouse surrounded by love and acceptance, she understood why.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

“Dean.”

Dean has heard his name be said by a million and one different people, all in different contexts. He knew what his name sounded like on Cas’s lips, breathless and caring. Dean had heard Sam screaming his name in terror. Dean had heard Grace say his name like the syllables made him better than God. He could remember his father’s gruff tone, strict and reprimanding. Dean remembered a cold night and ice clinking against glasses of whiskey and Bobby choked with emotion that he didn’t know how to express, telling him everything would be alright.

He remembered his name in Crowley’s voice, in Alastair’s, in Raphael’s and Metatron’s and Lucifer’s and Meg’s and Ruby’s and Anna’s and Zachariah’s. He knew what his name sounded like in every context, in every tone of the human voice spectrum, but this voice came as a surprise.

It had been a long time since he had heard Michael’s voice.

Dean turned, the dream world spreading before his eyes, filling in with color and depth and realism the longer he solidified his attention inside of it. He was standing on dying grass in a cloudy summer day in the middle of a cemetery he had never wanted to see again. And, standing before him in the same spot where Dean had once collapsed onto his knees to mourn his brother, was Adam Milligan with Michael’s grace piloting, and Dean felt like his entire stomach dropped to the center of gravity.

Like Michael could read his mind—and the bastard probably could—he grinned.

“Dean,” Michael said again, and then tilted his head in greeting. “It has been a long time. It has come to my attention that you are, ah, doing _well_.”

Dean wondered if being a dick was a genetic angel thing.

“All things considered, sure,” Dean said, shrugging. “I wouldn’t mind having my daughter back, but you angels are selfish.”

Michael nodded understandingly, a small smirk curling onto his face. Dean suddenly got the feeling that they were both thinking of something extraordinarily different.

“I am sure the recent events have been hard on you,” Michael sympathized as best as he could, his hands linked together in front of him like an innocent child about to get reprimanded. “I did not want it to be this way. It is the reason why I was so careless in allowing violent attempts to get you to become my vessel. I knew both outcomes would be painful for you, but I did not want you to have to go through this. I am sorry.”

“It’s a little too late for that,” Dean said coldly, scowling.

Michael sighed, shaking his head. “I know you still see me as the enemy, Dean, but I really am not. Of all the people who have been your enemies, I am further down the list than you think I am. I have never been in this to harm you or your family. I am only doing what I am meant to do by the word of my Father.”

“Right,” Dean said skeptically, snorting. “Daddy Dearest has just been so vocal, huh? Have you even spoken to the guy in the last thousand years?”

“You do not even realize the implications of the job I held in Heaven,” Michael said slowly, measuredly, almost—pityingly. “Oh, Dean, it has always been your most sorrowful quality, your faith. You do not believe in a higher power, but you believe so strongly in people, in _humanity_. It’s as beautiful as it is mournful. I understand how you and my brother Castiel are so well suited for one another. Naomi said that Castiel was lost when he pulled you from Hell, but he was never truly lost. He was just other. And you helped him find his wings.”

Dean stared at Michael. He blinked. And then said, “I really have no idea what’s happening right now.”

“I must have seemed entirely inhospitable when you last encountered me,” Michael said, and then—he just fucking _winked_. “I apologize for that. Where I am fair and just, I am also fierce and unforgiving, and you caught me in the middle of a battle to which the success of meant the world’s balance. I was not very kind to you or the others in attendance. As I mentioned before, Dean, I did not want it to come to this. I did not want to have to find you here one more time, watching an even worse outcome than the one before—because, this one, you will be unable to stop. It has been written.”

Michael truly looked devastated. Dean was almost inclined to believe him, but then he looked away.

“I don’t believe you,” Dean said.

“You don’t have to, I suppose,” Michael mused, and then shrugged his shoulders casually. “I just wished to speak to you again, and perhaps to help you understand the fate you and your family have been dealt. Like I said, this was not the way I would have wished for it to have been.”

“You mean that you wanted me to let you wear me to prom back in the day,” Dean supplies, and Michael looked amused for a moment before nodding in confirmation.

“That is one way to put it, yes. It made your fate much easier.”

“You would have killed my brother and destroyed the world.”

“The problem rises again, Dean,” Michael sighed, as if Dean had failed a simple task. “You have no _faith_.”

“So, what? You were planning on changing it up anyway?”

“It has never necessarily been written the way you seem to believe it was,” Michael told him. “I cannot predict precisely how the battle would have gone if I was in my superior vessel, but I can say that, despite everything, I am a fan of human nature. I think that what you have all created is intriguing, if exhausting. I would not have destroyed more than I had to, even if I issued some orders to the contrary.”

“You’re gonna preach to me about how nice you are, even if you were ready to smite entire cities?”

“War is a different set of circumstances, and I know that is a concept you are aware of. I cannot let pity and conscience into a wartime situation. I did what I had to do.”

If Dean had a nickel for every time he tried to use that fucking terrible excuse to justify something he did, he would be able to wallpaper his home in hundred dollar bills.

Instead of calling him out and talking themselves around in circles again, Dean just mutely shook his head, reaching up and running a hand anxiously over his face before turning and meeting Michael’s eyes again, his stomach lurching ever so slightly every time he looked at the face of the half-brother he could have known.

“How did you get out?” Dean demanded. “What is powerful enough to open a door like that without the key?”

“It’s always been destined that a certain angel would free Lucifer and I from the cage if the first apocalypse ended in the way it did,” Michael explained easily, his hands in his pockets like he and Dean were discussing the stock market or the weekly weather report. “The second apocalypse rides on many more prophecies that must come to pass. The rise in visibility of this angel in particular is one of the prophecies, and only he had the ability to free us and raise the angels. He knows his purpose in all of this, even if he of all people did not wish for it to come to pass in this manner.”

“Why would the angel want an alternate ending?” Dean replied, confused, but Michael just smiled at him sadly.

“Prophecy,” was his only response.

It was really fucking unhelpful.

“Why are we here?” Dean suddenly asked, gesturing around at the deadly remains of Stull Cemetery, and Michael glanced around curiously, as if he had just noticed their location. “Are you trying to tell me something? Why not just come to me directly?”

“I am less publically theatrical than Lucifer happens to be,” Michael answered, shrugging, “and I suppose I _am_ attempting to convey a message. It’s going to happen, Dean, no matter if you or I want it or not. Grace and Tyler—they were born for this. Their destinies were written for them the moment Sam pulled my brother and I into the cage with him. I will never allow Grace to be tortured in order to say yes to me—but she will anyway, Dean. It will always be this way. I am here to tell you that, and to warn you.”

“About what?”

Michael took a step forward. The reality around Dean rippled.

“You cannot change these events, Dean. You can try, but nothing will work. Fate has a strong hand in this. My Father has specifically ordered the events that shall follow us from here, and they will all lead to the inevitable conclusion that hangs in the balance of Tyler and Grace’s choices. They cannot be influenced by anyone other than themselves. I just want you to be aware of the part you will be playing in these events, and how easy it would be to tear the world apart if you allow your child to make one wrong decision. Do you understand?”

“What happens to my daughter at the end of this?” Dean asked the angel softly, his pulse racing. “If you win, what happens to her? To Tyler?”

“They are the strongest vessels, the strongest humans, on this planet,” Michael informed Dean. “They will make that choice for themselves, and their choices will be respected. It is of the orders written of us.”

It was just so unexplainable. None of it made any sense. Dean wanted to grip his hair and scream but he was stronger than that so he just faced the strongest archangel, the one he said no to, and his heart pounded in fear and protectiveness and he had only one more thing to say.

“I give you my consent,” Dean said to him, taking a step forward and spreading his arms. “Take me instead. This is me saying yes like I should have done thirty years ago. _Yes_.”

Michael looked devastated when he whispered, “I’m sorry, Dean. It’s too late for you. It has to be Grace. I’m sorry.”

Dean woke up to Castiel’s wide eyes, choking on a thousand apologies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! And I wish you all the best of emotional stability for the Supernatural season nine finale on Tuesday!!
> 
> xo Slang


	10. Fighting

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper with him,” Grace murmured when all but one was gone from the Roadhouse, her hands sliding stressfully through her hair, a movement so familiar of her father that she paused halfway through, a sudden strike of homesickness and a desire to see her parents sweeping through her, threatening to pull her into a sea of loneliness. Jo watched Grace’s turmoil with sadness in her eyes.

“It’s only normal,” Jo tried to plead with her. “It’s how you know of him. And, to be honest, you weren’t lying.

“I know I wasn’t lying, but it shouldn’t be okay that I tore into the guy for his mistakes without keeping in mind that he is a human with thoughts and feelings.”

“Your mouth was moving but all I heard was an angel in a trench coat.”

Grace let out a startled laugh, looking away from her useless hands to glance to Jo, and she was grinning at her hopefully. Grace rubbed her palms on her jeans nervously, tapping unreadable codes on her knees.

“Just because he has done terrible things,” Grace began, “doesn’t mean that even John Winchester doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“It’s teeming with angels out there,” Jo reminded her, somehow knowing just what she was thinking. “You can’t go after him—you have to wait for him to show, if he does at all.”

Grace breathed out heavily, anxious.

She felt bad, she felt shameful, at the same time that she felt righteous. She knew she had not said anything harshly false, but sometimes saying the truth was unnecessary harshness. It was wrong of her to engage him in an argument the moment she met him, but even in Heaven she could not rewrite what has already happened. The past is the past. Hers, and John’s. She could only accept all that had come to pass.

Just because she could not forgive him doesn’t mean she deserved to act so immaturely. She held firm to that.

Dean had been telling her ever since she was in diapers that sometimes in life she will do things she will regret, but he stressed to her that it was not the end of the line, and he wished he would have been able to realize that sooner. She never thought that she would regret speaking disrespectfully to John Winchester, but it would be useless for her to hang herself up in that regret.

“I still can’t believe Dean is with a dude,” Jo blurted out inelegantly.

Grace grinned and replied, “You can still tell he is a little bit straight with the muscle car and the guns, but he styled my hair until I was ten, and when he and Castiel had a twenty minute argument about which prom dress I looked best in, Dean started ranting about the color complimenting my face and how the princess cut is currently in season.”

“Shut up,” Jo gasped.

“No joke,” Grace promised her through laughter. “Dean even did my hair for prom, the little braid halo and curls and everything. Even oversaw my makeup. He threatened me on pain of death if I told anyone.”

Jo was still laughing hysterically at the mental image when there was a timid knock on the front door of the Roadhouse, and then the door cracked open, a figure squeezing through the gap and looking as if she was afraid to step on the floor, for fear of that offending someone or something, looking determined but ready to bolt at any given second.

Grace opened her mouth to tease the woman, to distract herself in the flustered actions of someone being embarrassed the same way Dean always does, but then she managed to get a good look at the woman and all hopes of speaking died in her throat.

“Is this the Roadhouse?” the woman asked them, her hands nervously pulling at the sleeves of her jacket. “I’m, uh, looking for Grace. Winchester?”

Jo and Grace looked at each other, and Grace figured that her face probably looked like her friend’s—flabbergasted, wide eyes, mouth open in a voicelessly surprised “oh”. They glanced back to the woman, both of them somehow full well knowing who they were looking at.

Mary Winchester stared back at them, brave but not wanting to overstep, determined but kind, and Grace’s only thought for a long moment was how much she wished Dean was here in that moment.

“Okay,” Jo murmured, sliding from her barstool carefully. “I’m gonna go make like a tree. Uh, call me if you need anything, I guess?”

Jo practically sprinted away, diving for the back hallway, to disappear into her room. Grace watched her go, a little confused about her haste, but managed the courage to turn back to Mary, holding her breath as if that would be enough to keep her anchored to her spot.

“I assume you talked to John,” Grace greeted Mary weakly, staying in her seat, trying not to fidget. Mary gazed at her curiously, obviously accepting that they were both strangers to each other and willingly giving them both space to breathe, and she offered Grace a kind smile, her eyes flashing with amusement.

“I did,” Mary confirmed. “He was very riled up from your confrontation. He usually comes to me when he needs to rant, or just simply needs someone to talk to.”

“I said some unkind things to him.”

“It’s not exactly difficult to be unkind to John sometimes,” Mary admitted, still smiling at Grace—her smile was just like Dean’s, the realization a hard kick straight to Grace’s chest. “He has made his mistakes. For once, he is not unaware of that. I’ve noticed that Heaven helps people come to terms with who they are and what they have done, and how to accept it.”

“It’s not Heaven,” Grace responded. “It’s your soul. It knows its worth and its mistakes.”

Mary nodded slowly, considering Grace’s knowledge of Heaven thoughtfully, obviously not about to question it. Mary had this atmosphere about her—she was calm and thoughtful, and it brought ease into her movements, her words, her entire environment around her. She was a star radiating light—it was practically blinding. But Grace could still see the hunter in her, noticing how Mary found the exits with her eyes, how she never fully turned her attention from the doorways, her eyes observing and feeding from the room around her.

Grace was humble, but she was still stunned by how much it felt like she was looking into a mirror when she looked at Mary.

Mary was a little taller than her with blonde hair pulled back into a sloppy style at the back of her head and blue eyes, but there was something similar in the way she held her shoulders, something achingly familiar in her smile. Mary was wearing tight jeans, a Beatles shirt, and a brown leather jacket almost completely identical to Grace’s. It was uncanny, how much Grace could be like someone she hadn’t met, someone even her father had barely known.

“Would you like to sit down?” Grace asked her politely, gesturing for the chair that Jo had abandoned, smiling with exhaustion. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long talk.”

Mary laughed but took the seat anyway, folding her hands on the tabletop. “I’m mostly curious. It’s not every day you hear that a granddaughter you didn’t know existed is running around in Heaven and pissing off your husband.”

Grace winced but Mary just laughed, shaking her head. She paused before rolling her eyes, still smirking, when she added, “But I’m not here to talk about yours and John’s scuffle. I’m . . . I couldn’t pay much attention to what was happening down on Earth. I tried at times, and John and I found out about what happened with the apocalypse when we accidentally ran into Bobby Singer a handful of years back . . . I don’t know. I guess I have always been curious. I knew my sons for so little time, and then they grew up to be heroes. And now I’m looking at the daughter of the man I always picture as four years old playing with toy cars on the rug in the living room.”

Grace offered her a sad smile and said, “Grace Mary Winchester. That’s my full name.”

Mary’s eyes immediately lit up with surprise and happiness and tears, and she looked at Grace with the most thankful smile that she had ever seen, and she knew it was the exact right thing to say.

“I have been afraid this entire time that they had practically forgotten me,” Mary confessed, but she was smiling. “I didn’t get to really be a mom to them, you know? It’s—it’s disorienting, to be honest. I might not have been the most important person in their life, but I was there, even when I couldn’t be, and that’s just—it’s amazing to think I mattered to them.”

“Of course you mattered,” Grace murmured. “You’re their mom.”

“I tried to watch over them the best I could, but I kind of had limited resources,” Mary tried to joke, smiling down at her hands. “I’m almost glad I didn’t get to see some of it. I didn’t see Sam die, or Dean die. I didn’t see the apocalypse. But I did see the terrible things my father did for all the wrong reasons, and I saw the leviathan creatures, and I watched them close the gates to Heaven forever. And then none of us could see them again.”

“Twenty-two years,” Grace said, and then waited until Mary’s eyes, as bright as hers and Dean’s, finally looked to her again, and Grace grinned. “I can tell you all about them. I’ll warn you, though, it’s pretty boring.”

“I was a hunter that tried to get out,” she reminded her. “I’m pretty okay with a heavy dose of boring.”

So Grace told her everything she could. She told her about the house and Sam in California, and she paused when she mentioned Dean and Castiel together but Mary’s smile just grew to be blinding and Grace kept going, telling Mary everything that she could think of. She told her of bumps and bruises and her rebellious teenage years, and Mary was laughing when Grace told her stories of every time she tried to sneak out when she was thirteen. Mary was practically in tears when Grace told her about the time she tried to steal the Impala to go to a house party and she turned on the interior light and Dean was sitting in the backseat, looking pissed off halfway to Sunday, still in his pajamas. He had grounded her for a month and a half, and Castiel had refused to make her favorite dishes for dinner the entire six weeks in spite.

 _This was how it should have been_ , Grace kept thinking as she and Mary exchanged opinions and stories, laughing alone in the bar for what must have been hours. This is what it should have been like when she met John Winchester—they should have sat down and been able to talk, but instead their chemistry mixed into defiance and hostility. She didn’t regret her actions—she just wished that so many different circumstances had fallen together before their meeting that would have made it different.

There was something about Mary that just felt like home.

Mary and Grace ended up on the ground, leaning against the bar, leaning against each other when they laughed, nudging each other’s ankles when they were caught up in something sad. It was the closest Grace had felt to someone that wasn’t her family—and that wasn’t entirely true, either. But Mary—she didn’t feel like family, or like a friend. She just felt like safety, and acceptance.

Grace hadn’t realized how much she had needed an unbiased person to listen to her until she had one.

“I’m scared to go home,” Grace whispered, staring up at the ceiling of the Roadhouse. Mary turned her head to look at her, curious, but Grace didn’t look away from the board ceiling. “The moment I step back onto the surface, another domino falls, and we’re one step closer.”

“You can’t run from it forever,” Mary reminded her softly.

“Can’t I?” Grace looked at her, feeling crazed. “What if I just stayed here and warded myself or something? What if I stayed where Michael could never find me? Dean would never say yes to him—Michael would never have a true vessel, and he would never go to the fight.”

“It can’t ever be that way, sweetheart,” Mary whispered, rubbing at Grace’s back soothingly, her eyes clouded with pity. “You know that as well as I do that this is it.”

“I know,” Grace murmured back, and it felt like a death sentence. “I just wish I had the option to try.”

“If you stayed up here, one or both of your dads would figure out a way to show up at that door,” Mary said, nodding toward the front entrance to the Roadhouse, “and it would not be pretty. Sometimes it’s best to let the natural be natural. It’s the hardest choice to make, but the other option—it’s not always worth it.”

Mary had promised Azazel the opportunity to Sam, to give him demon blood in order to save John’s life. Grace looked at her and realized that the natural order of the Winchester line hadn’t been corrupted with John and Azazel to save Dean—it had been in that one act before her father was even born that had changed it all, and had made destiny possible.

Mary had accepted that long ago, and she didn’t blame herself, because she knew it had been the right decision. Without it, she would have never been happy. She never would have lived.

Sometimes, the terrible things are worth the amazing ones.

“I’m so scared,” Grace finally admitted into the silence.

“I know, sweetie,” Mary said, and squeezed her shoulders. “I know.”

Grace could barely breathe, but at least Mary’s comfort made it a little easier to try.

“I am so proud of you,” Mary told her emotionally, leaning forward to wrap Grace tightly in her arms. “No matter what happens.”

Grace nodded against her shoulder, and she clutched just as tightly back, like Mary’s arms would be able to protect her from the world. And then Mary let her go, and Grace was drifting away again, lost and scared, unable to admit to either, wondering if she was making all of the right decisions.

It was then, in that silence, that the door to the Roadhouse creaked open, and Mary and Grace looked over simultaneously, both of them seeming startled with the realization that there was a world outside of their own. John Winchester, the last person either of them seemed to expect to see, hovered uncertainly in the doorway, the door closing softly behind him, and he looked at them in surprise, cautious. Grace immediately winced.

Mary took a deep breath before she pushed herself onto her feet and said, “John. I didn’t know you were coming back out here.”

“Yeah,” John replied lamely, and then glanced back at Grace.

Grace slowly rose from the ground, keeping her eyes on the figure of the man she had screamed at not too long ago, her fingers twitching nervously. Her own consolation was that John looked just as awkward to be around her—he shuffled uncertainly on his feet, and it looked like he didn’t know where to put his hands.

Mary cleared her throat and then beckoned John forward with one hand, and he hesitated before he obeyed, taking two steps until he was standing in front of Grace, and they were both looking at each other like they were waiting for the other to react.

“Okay,” Mary said, standing between them, her arms crossed sternly over her chest but a bright smile on her face, “we’re going to try this again, alright? Let’s pretend like the first time didn’t even exist.”

It wasn’t that easy, but both Grace and John seemed willing to pretend, so they nodded.

Mary waited, and then waved for them to make a move. Grace and John both turned to each other, both of them stalled with trepidation, but John surprised her by making the first move and sticking his hand out cautiously for her to shake.

“Name’s Winchester,” John joked weakly, offering her a small grin. “John Winchester.”

“Like the rifle, or like the whiskey?” Grace asked, forcing her eyes to widen.

John threw his head back and laughed. Grace somehow managed to reciprocate the action, offering John a small grin.

Mary was practically beaming with pride.

“Mind if I join you?” John asked, gesturing weakly to the nearest table, and Grace paused. Mary glanced between them, nervousness appearing on her face again, but then Grace took a long breath and smiled, and she knew this was the right thing to do.

“I would be honored,” Grace said, and then smiled wider. “John Winchester.”

The three of them sat down around one of the Roadhouse tables, and Grace told John everything.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Not unusually, Dean couldn’t sleep. Normally, though, when he wandered downstairs, he was alone.

Tyler sat on the couch, his eyes on the screen of his laptop as he read something, and he only looked up when he heard Dean’s footsteps on the stairs. Dean had known the kid since the day Allison had popped him out in the deliver room, and Tyler had spent a good chunk of his life chasing and being chased by Grace around this very house, but he had never seen Tyler look quite like this—he could see the outline of the bags underneath of his eyes, the sharp cut of his cheekbones reflected from the light of the television muted before him, his hair a mess like he had been running his fingers through it. Tyler looked up at Dean, and his eyes were still the same, but the expressions in it felt forced. Like he was playing a part.

Dean knew a little bit about that. It hurt like hell to see it on his nephew, though—the same way it had practically killed him every time he had looked at Sam and had seen that same expression.

“Hey,” Dean said, not knowing what else to say, and nearly winced when the emotionless expression on Tyler’s face didn’t waver. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Can’t,” Tyler said, and then looked back down at his computer screen. “Just being in that panic room freaks me out.”

“That’s not the only other empty bed in this house, you know.”

Tyler looked back up at him, and his eyes could shatter glass. “I’m not sleeping in Grace’s room. It would be like—I can’t this time. It’s not right.”

Dean slowly moved across the room, lowering himself down on the couch. Tyler closed his laptop and leaned back, rubbing at his eyes. He didn’t look like a fourteen-year-old kid anymore, edging closer to fifteen, with dreams to do amazing things. He looked like a cornered animal, wondering when the predator was going to take its first bite.

Dean didn’t look away from his face when he asked, “Why wouldn’t it be right?”

“It would be like sleeping in a tomb,” Tyler said, and then snorted. “The inevitable would be hanging over my head. Anyways, I can’t imagine sleeping to begin with. For a full house, it feels empty. Like it’s only filled with ghosts.”

Dean didn’t know when the kid had grown up so fast.

“We’re going to get her back,” Dean assured him.

“And then what?” Tyler demanded, helplessness creeping into his voice, his eyes becoming panicked. “She touches down, and the apocalypse is right behind her. Michael and Lucifer will come knocking, and we only have one option. Grace comes home, and I’m going to have to die, or I’m going to have to watch her die and know that I killed her.” Tyler looked up at Dean with a fake smile. “I can see why you refused to say yes to Michael the first time, but this—this isn’t the same thing. There is no one to take our places for us anymore.”

Dean wanted to disagree, because the original vessels were still around, because Sam and Dean would walk through miles of burning coals to save their children, but he knew he couldn’t. Dean knew that telling Tyler about how desperate he and Sam were to save them would just lead to more arguments, and none of them needed that.

“You are stronger than them,” Dean said.

“No,” Tyler replied, and then shook his head. “Don’t try that with me. I might seem like a stupid teenage boy, but I’m really not.”

“I know that,” Dean said, reaching his hands out so that he could grip his shoulders, forcing him to face him, and Tyler reluctantly looked up to meet Dean’s burning gaze. He looked so much like Sam at that age that Dean’s stomach flipped, and he nearly fell back in time. “I’m the last person in this house that would try to bullshit you, Ty. I’m not lying about this when I say that there’s usually something better to believe in than fate and destiny and all of that happy horse shit, okay? We’ll all fight like hell to make this okay, Ty. For both of you.”

“I don’t think that’s the way this is going to work,” Tyler murmured into the darkness, closing his eyes. “I appreciate it, but this is the Plan B. This is what everything has been leading up to. I’m not naïve enough to think that both of us are going to walk away from this.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean said, “I am.”

Tyler looked up at him, surprised, and then smiled. “Nothing quite like blind faith, huh?”

“It’s not all that blind at all,” Dean said, looking at Ty and seeing Sammy, and he clapped him hard on the shoulder before nodding to the couch. “Get some sleep up here if the panic room gives you the creeps. You’re no use to us walking around like a zombie.”

“Hypocrite,” Tyler responded, but he rolled his eyes and kicked Dean off of the couch anyway, flopping back down onto it, his feet already hanging off of the edge and he hadn’t even hit his growth spurt yet. Ty tucked his hands behind his head and said, “Now, shoo. This Winchester needs his beauty sleep while he’s still young enough to look beautiful.”

“Bitch,” Dean told him, and Ty’s grin widened.

“Jerk.”

Dean flipped him off when he walked away, and the only answer was Tyler’s laughter. Dean couldn’t help but to grin to himself—Tyler would be alright. No matter what happened, the kid was smart and resourceful and kind, and he was just like Sam—and _he_ turned out great in the end.

All he could really hope for was that history repeated itself. Even if it had been so hard to live through at the time, Dean couldn’t help but to think that this whole life he lived now made it all worth it.

Dean was halfway up the stairs before he noticed the figure leaning against Grace’s door, and he started. Cas looked up at him he noticed him stop, and he offered him a small smile, his eyes soft and filled with something like awe, and it made Dean’s skin feel warmer.

“What’re you doing up?” Dean murmured softly, aware of Sam and Allison sleeping just across the hall. Cas shook his head as him and held his hand out, and Dean didn’t hesitate before taking it and letting his husband pull him down the hall and into their room, pulling the door shut quietly behind them. Cas immediately turned and tucked himself into Dean’s chest, nuzzling his face into his neck, and Dean’s arms came around him to hold him in place, leaning his head down until his face was buried into messy black hair.

“Thank you,” Cas whispered into his skin.

“For what?” Dean rubbed Cas’s back, confused, pulling back slightly to try to see his face, but Castiel didn’t move away. “Cas, what’s wrong?”

“Tyler needed to hear that,” Cas told him softly, “and I didn’t know how to say it. So, thank you.”

“He’s a good kid,” Dean murmured, kissing the top of Cas’s head. “He’s allowed to be scared. I just don’t want him to think that he’s the only one that’s completely terrified.”

“Grace must be scared.” Cas’s hand tightened into Dean’s shirt at his back. Dean ran one soothing hand down Cas’s spine, but he felt the whiplash of the thought the same as his husband did.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dean confessed into the darkness of the night, into the silence of a sleeping house, into the skin of the only person he ever trusted to hear it. “I can’t go a minute without thinking about her—she’s so much like me, and I remember—and I know she wouldn’t let anyone see—”

“Grace has such a good heart,” Cas murmured, gripping Dean tighter. “I’m sure she’s found someone she trusts. She’s never been as good at bottling things up as you are.”

“As I was,” Dean corrected, and Cas smiled against his skin.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too,” Dean told him right back, crushing him closer. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“No,” Cas said, “but we can try to make it as okay as it will ever be.”

Cas was right. So was Tyler. Dean could stand there for days denying that anything bad would happen, but even the first apocalypse had knocked him off his feet so hard that he had barely been able to get up. To be so out of control, to see the fate of the world be left to the hands of two teenage kids who didn’t deserve to have to face something like this—it was going to be even harder. Michael had been right when he told Dean that he wouldn’t be able to interfere, that he was out of the running. Dean was always meant to play his part and, this time, his part was _helpless_. He was standing on the sidelines, watching his world crash down around him.

He was standing on the sidelines, giving Grace and Tyler the support they would need until the very end, and there were so many worse parts that he could be playing.

He didn’t know what was going to be happening at the final showdown. He didn’t know who would walk out of it alive. He didn’t know what the world would become, or who _he_ would become, if the aftermath didn’t tip in their favor. Dean had been so many versions of himself that he didn’t know what he could become if he had to watch the worst, especially when it came to his daughter, the one human he had held all night for her first night of life and had whispered broken promises to keep her safe no matter what.

Grace was the toddler who had wanted to take ballet because she thought it was beautiful. Grace was the little girl who cried when she lost her first tooth because she thought it meant that she was sick. She was the girl who learned how to cook because she wanted Dean to teach her and had learned to take care of cars because it was what Dean was good at. This was the girl who had looked up into the crowd at her graduation and had found him, who had smiled brighter than the sun, and hadn’t been able to start her valedictorian speech until he had smiled back, his eyes stinging with tears and pride.

Grace was stronger than he thought he ever had been. Dean knew that some people would call him a hero, but it had never meant more than when Grace had considered him one, looking up at him with reverence and awe.

Dean would do absolutely anything to save his daughter. But, maybe this time, he couldn’t save her from this.

Maybe it was about time he took a step back and let her decide her own destiny, no matter how much it killed him to let go of the reigns like that.

She was young, and she was bright, and she was probably scared out of her mind about the future. But maybe it wasn’t doing her any good to hide things from her, or to hide her from those things. She would be a better hunter than him if he let her be, and she would be strong enough to steer the apocalypse straight into the ending that she wanted.

But Dean was terrified. He didn’t want to watch his daughter or his nephew die for this.

He felt like he had already given enough.

Cas whispered the last thing Dean expected to hear: “I’m scared.”

“I am too,” Dean confessed, and he tugged Cas closer to the bed, both of them falling down onto it. Immediately, Cas wrapped himself closer, sliding a leg in between Dean’s, his hands sliding into his hair. Dean clung to him, trying to keep himself grounded.

Cas leaned up and pressed his lips to Dean’s face. “This ending isn’t going to go well, is it?”

Dean shook his head slowly.

“We need to prepare ourselves for that.”

Dean didn’t respond.

“We’ll figure it out,” Cas said confidently. “The way we always do.”

“We’ll be okay,” Dean said, but it felt like a lie, and it must have even sounded like one because Cas couldn’t even find it within himself to respond.

Neither of them slept that night. It felt like, the moment they closed their eyes, they would miss something, so they both stayed awake, clinging to each other, holding their breath, waiting for it to go wrong, waiting for the bad news. But it never came. Nothing happened. The house came alive not long after dawn and they wandered down with the sounds of life, eating breakfast and faking smiles, everyone pretending that they couldn’t see the sleepless bags under each other’s eyes. Life went on, the same way it would no matter how the end happened.

Dean wondered if they would feel the holes in their life the same way they did with the absence of Grace from the room. He wondered how much worse it would be if he or Sam lost their only child forever.

None of them seemed willing to admit that everything was about to change.

They moved to their different points in the house—Tyler to the slanted roof, Sam and Allison to the library in the living room, Dean and Cas to the kitchen table—all of them searching for answers, all of them falling short.

All of them hoping that blind faith would be enough.

But even Dean, who had lost his faith so long ago, knew that it would be a miracle for all of them to make it out alive. And maybe, just maybe, the Winchester family was due for a miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this many weeks ago and before 9x23 "Do You Believe In Miracles?", and now that last line hurts me.
> 
> SAVED is on a temporary hold until June 1st :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> xo Slang


	11. Crashing

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

The Roadhouse basement was filled with stacks of boxes of alcohol and various dry foods, all of which were only vague representations of what once was, filling in their space in the memory of how this building once stood. There was a line of three cots against the back wall, stiff folded sheets stationed at the foot of each. Two folding chairs were set up in the middle of that back space cut out for people who needed it, and Grace and Milo each occupied one of them, both of them silent, listening to the sound of footfalls and muffled voices above their heads.

It had been a long stretch of time, long enough that Mary and John had gone, all of them saying their goodbyes because all three of them knew it would be the last time they would see each other until Grace no longer had a heartbeat. Grace had watched them go, surprising herself with feeling sad to see them leave. She had enjoyed getting to know them, speaking in a peaceful environment, forgetting the negatives and focusing on the familiarity of family that currently mattered, and she had ended up enjoying herself. Seeing them go had been bittersweet—it meant she had to move her time onward, had to turn her sights back to the shoreline, back to home, but it also ripped her from that sense of peace that being in the same room with Mary Winchester had seemed to grant her.

It had been a long stretch of time with everyone returning, all of them more and more helpless as they filed back in, all of them slowly resigning themselves to playing their parts like puppets on a stage, when Milo had walked in, his eyes only for Grace, and he had asked to speak to her alone. Unable to leave and unwilling to inconvenience everyone more than she already had, she had led him into the basement.

They had been here for the last several minutes, unspeaking. Grace was starting to get a little restless.

“You know, when you ask someone to talk, they usually assume that means there is something you want to talk _about_ ,” Grace offered into the silence, hooking her eyebrows up expectantly. “Is there a reason you called me here for this meeting other than my room-brightening presence?”

Milo smiled a little and the tension released from his shoulders, his hands squeezing tightly before releasing again, and his entire body slumped. It had looked like he was a live wire, and then someone had just cut him from the circuit.

He looked up at her with those transfixing blue eyes, and she would never admit how they kind of took her breath away every time.

“Are you okay?” he asked, catching her off-guard.

“You brought me down into a dingy basement to ask me about my feelings?”

“Well, yes,” he said, confused. “You just recently found out you are the Michael sword. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh,” Grace said, letting out a lungful of air. “That. Right.”

Milo sat patiently, watching her with kind, soft eyes as she shifted uncomfortably in her chair, avoiding eye contact but not being able to look away from him. She opened her mouth to tell him a lie, to put on the trusty Winchester smirk and to assure him that of course she’s fine, why wouldn’t she be, and then she hesitated.

For some reason, she didn’t want to lie to Milo.

So, she didn’t.

“I’m scared, nervous,” she replied slowly, meeting his eyes. “But I have to be brave.”

“You don’t have to be,” Milo whispered.

“Of course I do,” Grace said, laughing dryly. “I _am_ brave. I just don’t have the luxury of being anything else right now, not when it’s do or die, you know?”

“You shouldn’t have to be something that you are not.”

“I don’t want my parents’ last memory of me as myself to be of me scared,” Grace clarified. “I don’t want them to remember me as that if everything goes sour. It’s not really a good legacy, I guess.”

Milo leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him like he was praying. He was looking at her, looking at her like he was analyzing her, and she suddenly felt like he saw too much of her, like he understood her in a way she was unused to being understood.

“I’ve lived a long life,” he told her, “and I have seen a lot of hope, and a lot of miracles. And I’ve seen a lot of fear. None of it was any less honorable.”

“How long have you lived?” she asked.

“Sometimes, I think, too long,” Milo murmured, and then smirked tiredly. “Not today, Grace. I won’t tell you who I am or what I have seen. I have a feeling that, when the time comes, you will realize for yourself.”

Grace couldn’t argue with that. It was another diversion, but this time he was showing her that he was confident she wouldn’t need his help. He wasn’t saying that she had to figure it out herself because he wasn’t sure if she would ever guess it—he was giving her that option because he knew she _would_ come to the right conclusion sooner rather than later, and he wanted to see her understand. He wanted to see if she was going to reject him before the name was out in the open. He wanted to see if she was going to accept him before he had to simmer in a horribly long moment of guessing what her reaction might be.

Grace couldn’t argue with that. She felt that it was fair enough—and she felt honored that this angel with all the knowledge in the world was confident that she didn’t need his help to be just as intelligent.

It was gratifying. Grace felt her cheeks heating up in pleasure and she ducked her head, but she knew he saw it. Thankfully, Milo didn’t ask, giving her the space she needed, as if she needed another reason to admire him.

“Why do you trust me?” Milo suddenly asked her, his eyes and face vulnerable, earnest. She looked up, surprised at how unexpected the question was, but it didn’t really surprise her at all.

She took a deep breath, stalling for time, stalling to think of the right words.

“I could tell from the beginning that you were the angel that raised the others,” Grace confessed, and Milo grimaced and hung his head. “You didn’t really make it subtle—you wanted me to see it, and I did. I don’t know who that makes you, or what that makes you, other than honest. I—I guess I trust you because, when you showed me that, you showed me why you did it. And I don’t think it was all about prophecy, like you keep telling me it is.”

Milo looked back up at her, taken aback, and asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I considered killing you when you told me that you started this mess. I can’t lie about that. But I couldn’t do it when you showed me—I could see that you did it because you were lonely. Prophecy might have said it would happen, but I could tell that you were alone, and you felt guilty for doing it but you were so relieved that you weren’t lonely anymore, that you had purpose, and killing you—it would have been like killing part of myself. You didn’t deserve it. You were honest, and you were desperate, and sad, and I trusted you because you are an angel that did what only a human would do.”

Milo stared at her, looking at her like he was gazing into the sun, his eyes shining with wonder. Grace felt her cheeks heat up again, but she didn’t look away.

“You shouldn’t be any of those things,” Milo murmured, leaning closer to her, still looking at her like she was a wonder of the world he had never seen before, the best of them all, and the heat of her embarrassment only deepened. “You shouldn’t be sad or guilty or lonely—you have the most beautiful soul I have ever seen. You deserve better than all of that.”

“That was cheesy,” Grace weakly teased, “but at least that wasn’t a fallen-from-Heaven pick-up line.”

Milo threw his head back and laughed.

She smiled at him before turning the smile back down to her hands, anxiously twitching together in her lap, and she waited until his pervasive laughter had filtered from the room before she asked him, “Do you know how this will end?”

“There is always more than one ending,” he told her softly, “but, yes, I know all of them. And, if I know you well enough, and I like to think I do, I may know the way it will end. But I cannot tell you. You know that.” He winked at her. “No cheating.”

“Can’t say I didn’t try,” she said, shaking her head and laughing softly. “I don’t know—I guess I’m just nervous. I thought college was a big deal until now. Now I suddenly have to decide the fate of the world.”

“You’ll make the decision you think is right,” Milo said, and then shrugged. “That is all you _can_ do, Grace. Whether it’s right for the world or not, it has to be your choice, and you will make it. And the dominos will fall as they may. But, no matter what happens—I’ll be here. My loyalty to you doesn’t stop with when I bring you home.”

“Loyalty?” Grace teased, but her heart was beating heavily in her chest. “That’s a little hefty. You barely even know me.”

“I believe in you,” Milo told her like he was telling her that it was sunny outside, and then he smiled. “You are the only person that I believe in.”

Grace flushed, the happy smile spreading over her face before she could control it, and Milo looked like he was going to reach forward and touch her face for a long moment before he thought better of it, turning a soft shade of pink himself and leaning back in his chair, his hands curling together even tighter. He smiled at her like nothing was of, and she was willing to pretend like they weren’t acting like the biggest dorks in the history of the world.

“I did come here for another reason,” he confessed to her, and then sobered slightly. “I’m getting you out of here as soon as possible. The unrest is escalating, and I am becoming worried of Michael and Lucifer’s impatience. It’s too dangerous to keep you here for much longer.”

Grace thought she wanted to go home until Milo told her she had to leave. Suddenly, her stomach turned, and she swallowed hard.

“I’ll have to say goodbye to everyone,” she told him, and he smiled at her. “They’ve all been so great to me up here, and who knows when—and if—I’ll ever see them again.”

Milo nodded slowly, and then smiled at her sadly. “There are several things I must get done before we are to make our escape. The way we’re taking out—yeah, it’s not recommended. I have to double-check a few things and make sure we’re not going to be followed, so take your time, but remember that our window of opportunity is closing. I’ll be back here soon.”

Milo got to his feet, moving to leave, and Grace surprised even herself by vaulting to her feet right with him and blurting out, “Good luck.”

He paused, pleasantly surprised, before he let a grin cover his face, and he crossed the space in between them to take her face in his hands, and she held her breath as he leaned down and pressed a kiss onto her forehead, lingering for a handful of moments.

“Thank you, angel,” he whispered, and then he was gone.

Grace stood there for a moment, standing in the middle of the basement in dead silence, thinking about what had just happened and what had been happening, and how she must have been so clueless not to notice. She remembered Castiel teasing about how he had known he was in love with Dean long before Dean even seemed to realize he had the human parts to love, and she remembered when she had asked Dean about it, and he had smiled softly to himself, his own little secret, and he had whispered to Grace that there wasn’t a moment where he fell for Castiel—just, one second, there he was, standing in the middle of it, and he knew he was a goner, and it was the best feeling he had ever felt.

Grace suddenly understood both of them.

She had fallen, crashed, for a mysterious angel named Milo.

And, with the way he had been looking at her, maybe he was just waiting for her to figure it out. Maybe he had loved her longer, longer than all of this, longer than his loneliness had been able to stop him, and maybe he had been waiting for her to find it in herself.

But she was more like her dad than she sometimes liked to believe she was.

Just like her father, she was standing in the middle of a dizzying forever, a goner for an angel with the most beautiful blue eyes that she had ever seen—an angel with his faith in her, an angel that has saved her.

The realization was amazing. Intoxicating.

And then, standing in the middle of the basement alone with her thoughts, she grimaced.

_My dads are gonna kill me._

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Tyler aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The glass bottle shattered.

“I think you need glasses,” Sam remarked.

“I hit the bottle, Dad,” Ty replied, aghast. Sam raised his eyebrows.

“You hit the bottle _next_ to the one you were _supposed_ to hit,” Sam pointed out, pointing to the first bottle in the line, untouched. “Jesus, Ty, can you even see the board in class? No wonder all your teachers email me bitching about how you don’t take notes.”

Tyler shot his father a patented Winchester Bitchface before replying, “I’d like to see you do better, Johnny Appleseed.”

Sam bristled before storming over and grabbing the airsoft gun from his son, scowling. “How the hell did you turn into a carbon copy of my brother?” Sam demanded, exasperated, and Allison and Cas burst into laughter from their rocking chairs on the porch. Dean just grinned, impressed and willing to put his name on what should just, at this point, be considered universal Winchester sass.

Sam raised the rifle just as Dean blurted out, “Remember when Dad taught you how to shoot?”

Sam looked back at Dean, looking surprised, but a small grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Kinda, yeah. We were in the middle of nowhere, on someone’s farm, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, and then smirked. “You were so excited about him finally letting you learn that you accidentally pulled the trigger and shot his hat straight off his head.”

“And you say I’m a terrible shot,” Tyler ribbed, laughing at his dad. “Hypocrite.”

“That was once,” Sam insisted, but he was laughing, too. “I remember that. Thought he was going to kill me.”

“I did, too,” Dean said. “Shot myself in the foot to distract him. Hurt like a bitch.”

Tyler and Sam looked exactly alike when they laughed.

“Ty found my actual gun once when he was five,” Sam shared, and Tyler groaned in protest. “He almost fucking shot me, thinking it was a toy gun. I’ve never seen Allison so pale.”

“I’ll never forgive, Winchester,” Allison yelled from the porch, her eyes narrowed.

“It felt like a hostage negotiation. Even at five, Ty tried to out-lawyer me.”

“Why’d I ask for?” Ty asked Sam, thinking hard. “Two extra cookies after dinner?”

“Five,” Sam snorted. “I haggled you down to two. I think Allis still slipped you five.”

“It was a _gun_ ,” Allison objected, but the Winchester boys in the backyard were too busy laughing.

“I found Grace playing with an angel blade when she was three,” Dean told them, and then glanced sheepishly at Cas. “Never told you about it. She held it up all proud-like and told me she found it under the sink, and when I asked why she was under the sink in the first place, she just rolled her eyes at me. Never got the angel blade back—I turned my back and she disappeared, and I only saw it again when she was ten and she pulled it out from under her bed, and she grinned at me. It’s the one she uses to this day.”

Cas’s smile was blinding as he pictured it—their kid, practically as stubborn as Dean even when she was barely old enough to put on her own socks, rolling her eyes at him when he questioned her.

“So I see her temperament remains the same,” Ty commented what everyone was thinking, but Dean took a playful swipe at him, grinning when Tyler hit him back and grumbled something about old-man reflexes. “I bet you all I have the best story—Grace and I were running around this very backyard about five years ago with that very gun and she accidentally shot me in the ass and threatened to beat me up if I told anyone.”

Dean threw his head back and laughed harder than he had in weeks.

“I still have the scar!” Tyler yelled over their laughter, indignant, but the front didn’t last long before he was laughing just as hard, leaning on the table with the bottles to keep himself upright. “I’ll never forget her face when the shot went off. _Priceless_. I think she thought she had just killed me.”

“I think all Winchesters should be kept away from guns,” Allison told them, rolling her eyes. “Ironic that the Winchester name has brands of whiskey and guns, and those are both things this family needs to stay away from.”

Dean was practically wiping tears of laughter from his eyes when they heard the sonic boom.

“What the hell was that?” Sam demanded, looking up at the sky. “That didn’t sound right.”

Cas and Allison were suddenly on their feet. Sam reached unconsciously for the gun in his back waistband. Tyler’s eyes could have killed.

Dean felt static on his back before Cas even yelled, “Dean!”

Dean whirled around, poised to attack, and then stopped short at the bloodied figure swaying behind him. Dean blinked, stunned, before he demanded, “ _Milo?_ ”

“Sorry to just drop in,” Milo offered shakily, laughing at his own pun, before he collapsed forward. Dean barely managed to catch him, grabbing onto his shirt, and he yelled, “Milo!”

“Sit him down,” Allison told him, jumping off of the porch, half a step behind Castiel. “Should I get him a glass of water?”

“I’m a being of celestial intent,” Milo muttered, leaning on Dean as he glanced up at Allison and offered her a wobbly smile. “I’ll be fine. Just tripped when I was heading earthbound.”

“What, you fall down the stairs or something?” Dean demanded, lowering the angel to the ground. Milo offered no resistance and sunk onto the earth, ducking his bloodied head. “You look like someone beat the shit out of you and shoved you into a locker.”

“Close,” Milo told him. “I was jumped trying to get out of Heaven to warn you guys that I’m getting Grace out as soon as possible. I’m a pretty big name and a pretty authoritative figure, so, when they saw me, they all got antsy and started asking too many questions a little too aggressively. They’re restless now that Michael is ascending.”

“Michael is ascending?” Cas demanded sharply, kneeling down next to Dean, his eyes frantic on the angel looking at him.

“Of course he is,” Milo said, and then laughed bitterly. “His brothers and sisters are in turmoil. His vessel is in Heaven. Why not go home?”

Milo looked broken. He looked like one of the fallen angels Dean had once seen, desperate and sad and wanting something too big for them to ask for. Milo looked like hell, his face bruised and battered, his nose and lips bleeding. His shirt was torn in two places, and the wounds looked like those made by an angel blade. He looked sad, and angry, and tired.

But determined. His eyes were burning.

Milo shook his head before muttering, “Heaven’s lost it. As much as I hate to say it, Michael is the only one who can fix it.”

“When are you getting her out?” Cas asked him as Milo pushed himself slowly onto his feet, Dean and Cas following him up, their hands hovering in the space between them just in case they would have to grab him from collapsing again. Milo steadied himself on his feet before putting a hand in front of his face, and, when he pulled away, all of his facial wounds were gone.

“After I get back, and after she’s said her goodbyes,” Milo answered, glancing upwards in case checking to see if someone was listening. “I’m smuggling her out in a very unconventional way, and it’s—it’s kind of like a fall, only the landing can be chosen and no wings are lost. But I won’t pretend to know a thing about falling.”

“You haven’t ever fallen?” Cas demanded, sounding surprised—and suddenly suspicious. He straightened, his expression smoothing over, as he asked, “Who are you, to not have been in the Fall?”

“Stronger and older than the word of God, that’s who,” Milo said, and then smirked. “I’ll get your daughter out no matter what it takes. Even if I can’t go with her.”

Dean was the only one that caught the flash of fear and pain in Milo’s eyes when he said that, the angel soon smoothing it over with indifference, but Dean couldn’t forget it. It felt like he had been hit hard in the stomach by a hammer, by the realization that this angel who didn’t Fall cared about Grace too much.

Dean didn’t know whether to be relieved or sick when he asked, “Where would you be landing?”

“Dunno,” Milo said, shrugging. “I’m going to let Grace decide.”

He suddenly looked straight at Dean, and he smiled.

“You know your daughter the best of anyone,” Milo told him, sounding like he admired Dean, and Dean was pretty sure this guy was going to give him whiplash when he said, “I have a feeling you’ll know where she would land.”

Dean frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got to beam back up,” Milo said, glancing back upwards again, suddenly looking a little uneasy. “Time is running out.”

Cas stiffened like he was afraid to ask which countdown clock Milo was referring to.

“Ciao,” Milo said, at the same moment Dean blurted, “Good luck.”

Milo looked at Dean, blinked slowly, and then gave him the oddest amused grin.

And then he was gone.

“Dean,” Sam said, and Dean turned around to face his brother, who was still staring at the place where Milo had been. “Dean, tell me you’ve got an idea.”

“I’m thinking,” Dean breathed, reaching up and running a hand worriedly through his hair, his thoughts jumbled and panicked. He looked up and met Cas’s eyes, wide and worried, and it was suddenly harder to swallow. “She wouldn’t come here. They already found her once here.”

“Would she go to mine?” Sam demanded, and then he pulled out his phone. “I could get a plane back and beat them there.”

“Too random,” Dean muttered, rubbing his face. “Milo probably told her that you’re here, and she knows the apocalypse happens in Lawrence.”

“Then would she go to Lawrence?”

“No,” Cas said, knowing that much. “She’s never even been to Lawrence.”

“She’d go to the last place we would think,” Ty offered. “But it would also be the last place the _angels_ would think.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean said, realizing. “ _Son of a bitch_.”

“Dean?” Cas demanded, but Dean ignored him, looking out at them, feeling wild.

“Pack a bag and get in the car,” Dean told them, his heart beating frantically, eyes wide, but he felt a triumphant grin cross his face. “I know _exactly_ where she’ll go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sadly not taking my big stories as seriously anymore. I apologize if that begins to show in the text.
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Slang


	12. Falling

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

Ash surprised her by hugging her.

“You are a pain in the ass,” he murmured into the hug, squeezing tight, “but you’re quite the badass lady, and I can give credit where it’s due. Tell Dean I said howdy, alright?”

“Sure thing, Doctor Badass,” Grace told him, offering him a soft smile as they pulled away, thumping him on the back. “Your machine would run better if you made the processor external.”

“I hate you,” Ash told her fondly.

Grace was still smiling when Kevin Tran hugged her hard.

“Good luck at Princeton,” he told her, and she almost cried, remembering it had once been his dream to go somewhere that she was so careless about, somewhere she believed in only for the ivy league bragging right. She nodded tearfully, and had to take a deep breath before turning to the next in line, fixing that same smile on her face.

Ellen was beaming when she said, “Come here, kiddo.”

Grace laughed before throwing her arms around the woman, burying her head in her shoulder, Ellen reaching up and running her hand over her hair, her touch so much like a mother’s that it made Grace’s chest tighten in anticipation to seeing her dads again. Ellen pulled back and kissed her on the forehead.

“You fight like hell, you hear me?” Ellen told her sternly, but her eyes were bright and proud. “Don’t let some archangel walk all over you. We’re rooting for you up here, no matter what you do.”

“Thanks, Ellen,” Grace whispered, smiling at her. “I’ll send you all a postcard from the end of the world.”

“Dumbass,” Ellen told her, but she said it like an ‘I love you’ and Grace once again couldn’t believe that she was saying a goodbye to family so short a time after having said hello.

Jo shoved her way in front of Grace and threw her arms around her, and Grace would have staggered under the weight if Jo didn’t weigh ninety pounds soaking wet. Instead, Grace laughed and hugged her back, squeezing her just as tightly, knowing that they would have been best friends in another life.

“I’ll see you again, Jo,” Grace assured her. “Probably sooner rather than later.”

“Make it later,” Jo murmured, sounding more affected than Grace had intended to make her and, when she pulled away, the girl with the confidence and the knife collection was crying.

Jo offered her a watery smile and a wink before stepping aside, and Grace thought the goodbye process couldn’t possibly be more difficult.

Grace had only seen Bobby truly smile about three times, the kind of smile where it shows in the eyes, and this was one of those smiles. He smiled and crossed the space to put his hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eye, and she looked up at him dutifully, waiting patiently as he took a long, deep breath.

“Don’t worry about the greater good, you hear me?” Bobby demanded, but didn’t wait for her answer before continuing, his voice gruff and determined and soft and sympathetic all at once. “The world doesn’t need you to take care of it, alright? You’re fightin’ this battle for you and no one else. And no matter what choices you make, I’m proud of you. We’re _all_ proud. You’re brave enough to make the right decision, even if it’s the hard one, and I believe in you.”

“Thank you, Bobby,” Grace whispered, and let him fold her in his arms, breathing in the smell of gasoline and liquor and old ink. “Thank you so much.”

“You tell those idjit parents of yours that they raised one hell of a daughter,” Bobby told her, pulling away but still holding her shoulders, squeezing, his smile contagious. “Tell Dean and Sam and Cas that I’m proud of them for leavin’ all that shit in their past behind and startin’ new.”

“Yes, sir,” Grace said.

“Keep your eyes on that blue-eyed angel if you don’t wanna end up just like your daddy,” Bobby scolded her, his eyes grazing to shoot a warning glare at the spot over her head where Milo must be waiting, and Grace laughed.

“Yes, sir,” Grace said again, her smile secret.

Bobby kissed her temple and murmured, “Good luck, girly.”

Grace offered him the best smile she could muster as she stepped away, his grip falling from her shoulders, leaving her feeling unanchored, ungrounded, but she knew they were right—that she was strong, and she was brave, and, to go home, she would be able to let go and leave them behind. Even if she didn’t want to.

She could make the hard decisions. She just hoped she could make the hardest decision of all when it comes to it.

She walked over to where Milo was standing, leaning against the wall next to the door, his eyes soft and his smile even softer, and she felt her answering smile before she even thought to make one. She glanced back at her family, at the family her fathers and her uncle had before the end, and she took a deep breath before grinning at them, and she watched them grin back at her.

“Are you ready?” Milo asked, and Grace slowly nodded her head.

“Readier than I will ever be,” she said, turning to look at him.

He held out his hand. And she took it.

Milo opened the Roadhouse door and stepped out of it. Grace hesitated for just one more moment, one last look back at the family and friends she was leaving behind, and she left them with a patented Winchester smirk and a salute with her free hand.

She stepped out the door, and she was somewhere else.

“We have to talk quick,” Milo told her, turning on her, his eyes bright. “We’re going out the back door, and it’s going to be like falling. I need you to think of a place for me to land, alright? That’s your job. Hold on like hell, and think a destination. I’ll land there.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Grace replied, nodding.

Milo looked around at the open field they were standing in and whispered off-handedly, “This was once the location of Castiel’s favorite personal Heaven.” She glanced around at the lush green, at the flowers, the blue sky, and she understood why her father would fall for humanity after believing in a space like this. Milo looked at her, his eyes so bright she almost had to look away, and he stated, “I once stood and watched while he slaughtered thousands of angels right in this very spot. Angels don’t come here anymore. Unsacred ground is uncommon in Heaven, so it’s the perfect back door.”

It didn’t seem as wonderful a place anymore. Grace shifted uneasily, away from Milo, but his hand only squeezed tighter on hers, like he was afraid she would let go.

“Do roller coasters make you sick?” he suddenly asked her.

“No,” she told him, caught off guard. “Why?”

Milo grinned and tugged her closer, hard, and she stumbled until she crashed into him, and his arms came up around her, holding her tightly to his body. She turned red at the same time as the realization hit her, and she looked up at Milo, panicked.

“What do you mean about it being like falling?” she demanded.

“Close your eyes and think of Kansas, Dorothy,” Milo whispered. “We’re going home.”

And then the ground dropped from beneath their feet, and they were falling.

Grace screamed as the air ripped around them, and it was like when she had first been brought into Heaven, and it wasn’t. It was like the drop of a roller coaster, her stomach back in the unsacred space of Heaven, and it was only slightly less of sensory chaos than it had been before, but this time Grace thought about Milo’s arms around her and the thrill of going back home, and one word echoed through her head— _Kansas_.

Just as soon as it started, right when Grace was sure it would be too much and she would lose consciousness, it was over.

Milo breathed out before he murmured, “You alright, angel?”

“Don’t let go,” Grace managed back. “I might fall over. Or vomit.”

“Duly noted,” he replied drily, with a hint of amusement, before she felt him lift his head up and glance around. “Where are we?”

“Your internal compass a little fuzzy, blue?”

“It was a little more tricky and logistical on my end,” Milo responded icily, leaning down and making sure she could see his scowl. “I was both the object jamming the signal and your parachute, princess. The back doors of Heaven are a little bit of a bitch to open. Hence why we have the big pearly gates.”

“Lebanon, Kansas,” Grace told him as she slowly pulled away from him, testing her sea-legs and turning to walk to the door when they proved steady enough. Milo followed close behind, one hand reached out as if to steady her if she swayed, but he did indeed looked a little more worn and torn than usual. “The Men of Letters bunker. Welcome home, Dorothy.”

Grace turned the key, and the door swung open at her touch, like it sensed a legacy.

Grace crossed the threshold and pulled Milo in behind her, pausing to re-hide the spare key over the doorway in the Hide-A-Key before pulling the door shut and locking it behind her, breathing in the smell of home. She flipped on the light and looked around as they all flickered to life, smiling because, although Heaven looked a lot like Earth, it would never come close enough.

Milo let out a low whistle as he glanced around, his eyes wide.

“Not half bad,” Milo observed, glancing at her.

“Dean, Sam, and Castiel have added some recent warding that Ty found in a theology book somewhere,” Grace explained, tracing the carvings around the door’s interior. “It’s untraceable now. No strange entities can get in unless invited, hence why you weren’t kicked halfway to Sunday. You’ll be able to come in as long as the invitee considers you a guest.”

“That’s remarkable,” Milo said, his eyes wide and eager, as he traced the warding. “I know of this spell, but I’ve never seen it used. The same way I knew of the Men of Letters bunker and have heard vastly of the secrets and information they kept, but I never saw the inside. I never expected it to be this.”

“My home away from home,” Grace joked, heading for the stairs. “Also, mine. Technically.”

“Amazing,” Milo breathed, walking behind her but still looking around at everything, drinking it in curiously, and Grace shot a grin over her shoulder, turning to look at him when they hit the main level and he eagerly headed for the library.

“Help yourself, angel boy,” she called to his back, grinning. “I’m going to go shower and change out of these ratty clothes. The least you could do is use some of your angel mojo to spruce this place up and make it clean while I’m still recovering my sea-legs, if you wouldn’t mind. It would save me an hour that could be used to save the world from utter destruction.”

A sigh echoed back to her, but he turned around to wink, and she offered him a grin back before turning and heading down the hallway, wondering, belatedly if she should call her dads and tell them where they are—but she had a feeling that, if she knew Dean at all, they were already on their way.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Dean was outside before the rest of them, clearing the porch steps in one jump and scrambling to unlock the Impala, throwing a bag he had hurriedly packed for him and Cas into the backseat, next to a bag of weapons. Cas wasn’t far behind him, carting a bag for Grace, and he threw it in the backseat as well before turning to Dean, his eyes wide and frenzied and imploring. Dean wondered if his heart was racing as fast as his was.

“Where are we going?” Cas demanded as Sam and company filed out of the door, Allison locking the door quickly behind her while Ty wasted no time in shoving all of the family’s bags into the trunk. Sam paced up to them as Dean grinned at them, feeling like he could do cartwheels if he wasn’t gaining on sixty with aches and pains lingering from the hunter days.

“There’s only one place in the world safe enough for her to even consider,” Dean said, grinning. “The bunker. She _has_ to be at the bunker. It’s the last place anyone would think to look.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said, stunned. “Of _course_. I forgot that place even existed. And it has the new warding—nothing gets in. That’s _genius_ , Dean.”

“Dean,” Cas said, and Dean heard the urgency, the desperation, the need—the same that he felt thundering through his veins—and Dean sent a victorious grin to his husband.

“We’ve got her, Cas,” he told him.

“Go,” Sam urged them, stepping away, reaching into his pockets for his keys. “Go, Dean. Get your daughter. We’ll be right behind you.”

Dean and Cas didn’t need to be told twice—they were in the car and flying out of the driveway before Sam had even gotten into hiscar, dust rising behind them, the radio thudding music that was as fast as the pace of Dean’s heart as he pressed harder on the gas, watching the speed climb, willing it to be faster.

“How long should it take to get there?” Cas asked anxiously, one hand gripping the door handle and the other the seat, like he was expecting to jump out and start running any minute. Dean reached over and took the hand on the seat, gripping back hard, and Cas took a deep breath, his shoulders relaxing somewhat.

“About six hours,” Dean told him, “but probably five and a half if I drive like hell.”

Without needing to be prompted, Dean upped the speed, and Cas didn’t complain.

Instead, he said, “She’s home.”

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said, and then let out an incredulous, watery laugh. “She’s okay. She’s coming home.”

Cas reached their joined hands up to press his lips to Dean’s knuckles, letting out a relieved laugh, and his smile nearly made Dean’s heart stop.

The five hours and thirty-six minutes it took to reach Lebanon was both the longest and shortest five hours and thirty-six minutes in Dean Winchester’s entire life.

*

Dean slammed on the brakes outside of the bunker door, throwing the car into park and turning off the engine with shaking hands, using all of that motion to throw himself out of the car, not bothering to lock it in his wake as he sprinted around the front, reaching the door and grabbing for the key above the doorway. Cas scrambled out of the car right behind him, half a step behind as Dean’s shaking hands managed to unlock the door, the final door, and he bounded through, his heart nearly bursting out of his chest when he saw all the lights were on.

“Grace?” Dean yelled, sprinting into the bunker and heading for the stairs, his voice shaking with relief and terror and happiness as he yelled again, his voice almost breaking, “ _Grace?_ ”

Dean was halfway down the stairs when Grace burst out of the hallway leading to the residential wing, her hair down around her face, wearing a long sleeved maroon shirt and shorts and no shoes, looking so beautiful, and the most amazing smile spread over her face as she yelled back, “Dad!” and ran for him as well.

They met halfway. She jumped at him, laughing happily, and he caught his baby girl in his arms, swinging her around, clutching her tight to his chest, his thoughts a swirl of _I love you_ and _I thought I would never see you again_ and _I was so scared I lost you_ and _thank god you’re okay_.

“Grace,” he whispered, his arms curling even tighter, the tears he had been holding back for the last few weeks spilling out the moment he felt her own tears against his neck.

He let her down onto her feet but didn’t let her go, and they were both caught off-guard as Cas slammed into them, his arms going around them both, his head buried in her hair. Grace let out a choked laugh and released Dean to wrap her arms around Cas, but Dean didn’t let go of her, _couldn’t_ let go of her, just stood there shaking wrapped around two people he couldn’t live without.

“I am so happy to see you,” Grace whispered thickly, letting out a choked laugh. “I have so many crazy stories to tell you. You won’t even _believe_ half of them. _I_ barely believe them. Holy hell, I was kidnapped, wasn’t I? It’s finally hitting me. Have I told you guys that I love you lately? Because I do.”

“I love you, too, Grace,” Dean murmured, and Cas whispered the same into her temple, pressing his lips onto her face, squeezing his arms around Dean and Grace even tighter before releasing them, and Dean reluctantly followed suit. Grace took a step back and beamed at them, looking happy and invigorated, like it was the greatest moment in her entire life.

Dean looked down at his daughter, and he was struck by just how much she looked like him.

“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Dean murmured, reaching up and brushing her hair behind her ear, and she turned a megawatt smile on him.

Cas reached forward and grabbed her shoulders, waiting until she turned and looked him in the eye before choking out, “Never do that again, Grace Mary Winchester. I mean it. _Never_.”

Grace let out a choked laugh before nodding, and Cas let go of her slowly, tears slipping down his face even though his eyes were brighter than a nuclear blast.

Their family reunion was interrupted by a sudden loud pounding above them at the door, and all three of them glanced back up at it as Sam shouted, “Dean, you jerk, you locked us out!”

Dean laughed, reaching up and rubbing the tears from his face as Milo appeared next to the door, swinging it open, and greeted the family dryly, “You’ve reached the home of unappreciated participation—how can I help you?”

Sam burst out laughing and clapped Milo hard on the shoulder, stepping into the bunker as Milo moved to let them in. He beamed when he saw Grace looking up at him, but she spoke first.

“Sammy!” she yelled happily, spreading her arms and grinning up at him. “Welcome to the party. As you can see, I have already made two grown men cry.”

Sam laughed and jogged down the stairs, and she jumped into his arms, laughing when he spun her once before setting her onto her feet, kissing the top of her head and murmuring a _welcome back_ into her hair. Allison engulfed her into her arms milliseconds later with a “thank god you’re back, we were so worried”, and Grace murmured back that it’s so good to see them.

Grace and Tyler shared a stare before they threw their arms around each other, tight, desperate, mutual mourning and apologies in their body language, and the elder Winchesters pretended like they couldn’t see it, like they didn’t notice how they hugged each other for too long, because they both knew it would probably be for the last time.

Grace pulled away and smiled around at them all, nearly jumping up and down, and Dean couldn’t help but to smile at her energy. “Okay, everyone hold on, because I’m about to blow you away with the stories I’ve got.”

And then she was talking as she lead them to the library tables, all of them sitting down around her, Dean and Cas on either side, starting off by telling them all about getting abducted, and then about landing in Heaven and being entirely confused, thinking she was hallucinating before realizing it was the wrong perspective, and then she talked about running down the main road outside of the house and getting abducted by some freak in a ridiculous Mexican wrestling mask, and Dean and Sam were laughing. She told them all about beating the shit out of Ash before she figured out where they were, before identifying the people of the Roadhouse. Milo, leaning against the wall behind Sam’s family, grinned as she talked about the angel that walked into the Roadhouse, and how she beat the shit out of that stranger as well, and how he had told her everything, and then promised to bring her home. Dean smiled thankfully at the angel when Grace wasn’t looking, and Milo responded with nodding firmly, a smile pulling at his lips.

Grace told them all animatedly about telling the Roadhouse crew all about them, and how proud they were of them, and Dean felt like his heart was in his throat when she told them that Bobby was so proud, _so_ proud, and he felt tears stinging in his eyes.

And then she told them about John Winchester walking in, and the explosions that followed.

“I wasn’t very kind to him,” Grace admitted, grimacing. “I am immensely happy that he returned later, so I could apologize, but I said some truly nasty things about him to his face. And I kind of confessed about you guys.” Grace looked between Dean and Cas, grinning sheepishly. “The word ‘husband’ kinda slipped out. John looked like I had stabbed him in the throat. And then he took off, not wanting to fight with me anymore, and then Bobby would never admit this but he was so happy for you guys that he cried a little.” Grace beamed at Dean. “He kept telling me to make sure to tell you that he was proud, that he was happy for you. He also said you raised a kick-ass kid. The gruff guy sure did care about his sons.”

It hit Dean that he had always cared about what Bobby’s reaction would be to his relationship with Cas, and it felt like the world lifted off of his shoulders when Grace said that he was happy for him, that he didn’t hate him, that he wouldn’t turn his back and run the way John had when he heard the word he had associated with Cas for just over twenty years now. He would probably deny it later but, when he reached out and grabbed Grace into another hug, tears were rolling down his face once again.

She told them about meeting Mary Winchester and finding in her a kindred spirit, and she told them about how she rekindled faith with John, and she told them about her goodbyes and the fall and finding themselves here. She grinned at Milo and said, “He called me Dorothy and told me something about Kansas and I subconsciously just thought of this place. By the time we got here, I figured I should probably call you, but something—something told me you already knew how to find me.”

She looked at Dean when she said it, and the smile on her face was magnificent. He laughed and watched Cas lean over and press a kiss onto her forehead, smiling down at her.

Dean glanced at Milo, and froze.

Dean had seen it when he had been standing with Milo just hours ago in the backyard—he had seen a flash of it on Milo’s face with the very mention of Grace and what he would sacrifice, and he didn’t know if Milo just wasn’t trying to hide anymore or if he didn’t know the way he was looking at Dean’s daughter, but there was no guesswork now. Milo was smiling at Grace softly, adoringly, his eyes shining as she explained the appearances of Sam and Dean’s old friends to Ty excitedly. Dean knew that look. He had worn that look a million times, and he had seen it just as many times on his own husband’s face.

Dean’s chest felt like it was caving in when he looked at the first boy Grace had ever brought home, and he saw how much he loved her.

Dean would have to have a word with Cas about the intent of blue-eyed angels.

 _Like father, like daughter_ , Dean thought incredulously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Slang


	13. Choosing

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“We need to talk about the elephant in the room,” Grace told them the next morning over breakfast, her plate untouched. Dean looked up at her from across the table, freezing. Castiel shifted nervously beside her. Allison acted like Grace had just commented on the weather, staring pointedly at her plate and continuously and endlessly stirring her coffee, while Sam flinched. Ty just looked at her from his spot next to Dean, his expression fearful and grateful. Milo, on Dean’s other side, smiled bitterly.

“We’ll figure out a way—” Dean began ambitiously, his heart so obviously not in it, and Grace just smiled and shook her head at him, cutting him off as effectively as slapping a hand over his mouth.

“We all know how this has to end,” she told them softly, leaning forward, her stomach churning with the effort it took to say the words, but she knew they couldn’t avoid them anymore. They had spent the whole night circled in an atmosphere of thankfulness, of happiness and togetherness, but that wouldn’t last forever. They had their night of celebration, of ignorance. But it was time to wake up.

She met Milo’s gaze, and he looked oddly proud of her at the same time it looked like he was staring at her dead body, and she had to look away before she completely lost her nerve, swallowing heavily.

“Michael is probably up in Heaven straightening it out right now,” she announced, “and Satan is off doing whatever the hell Satan does, eating babies and flooding small Irish countryside villages or whatever. We’ve got days to figure this out before it’s time to act. We don’t have the luxury of ignorance.”

She glanced around at them. Dean and Cas looked like she was diffusing a bomb. Allison and Sam just looked like they wanted to get up and walk away from the room, not wanting to accept fate, not even wanting to hear about it. But she knew they wouldn’t. She knew that, of all people, Sam Winchester would understand what she was about to say next.

Grace curled her hand into a fist under the table, trying to hide that her hands were shaking. She was sure she fooled no one, and her eyes met Dean’s when she looked up, breathing steadily, clutching desperately within herself for the bravery she needed for this.

“It’s all about choices,” Grace murmured, straightening up. “The apocalypse is every choice, culminating into an endgame. Most of those choices can only be made then and there, but I—I know my first choice.”

“Grace,” Castiel whispered through frozen lips, but he couldn’t stop her from saying what she had to.

“I’m going to say yes to Michael,” she announced, closing her eyes.

“You don’t have to—” Dean tried again.

“Of course I do,” Grace whispered without opening her eyes, smiling sadly. “Maybe it’s not always the smart thing, to oppose fate. Maybe you’ve got to face it head on, and hope for the best.”

For a long moment, the room was silent. And then Tyler said, “I’m going to say yes to Lucifer.”

Allison made a desperate sound, so softly that he might not have even heard it from across the table, but it made Grace open her eyes. He was looking across at her, looking stronger and more mature than a fifteen-year-old boy, his hazel eyes determined as he grinned at her. “How about it, Grace Face? You ready to go down in an inferno of hellfire?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, baby cousin of mine,” Grace said, and then smiled at him, feeling the tears in her eyes that she saw reflected in his, and her chest tightened.

“This is a big decision for you both to be making,” Milo said from his spot on the edge of it all, looking in, his eyes cautious as he glanced between Grace and Ty. “I hope you know how irreversible this is.”

“Milo,” Grace whispered, “don’t be an idiot.”

Milo bowed his head, conceding to her wishes, and shut up.

“We can’t change the game anymore,” Grace told them helplessly, shaking her head. “This isn’t the same game. This must end, no matter what, and I will do what I have to do to see it end.”

Grace watched Dean look up, and she watched him meet his brother’s eyes. She didn’t understand that look, spoken in a language of years of brotherhood and camaraderie, but something didn’t sit right about it in her stomach. She chose not to question it. But she had a feeling that, in hindsight, that would be one of her many choices that she would look back on and regret.

Grace didn’t have time to question her fate today.

“Do we end it in the same place?” Grace asked then, cursing internally when her voice shook. “Are we supposed to end it in Lawrence?”

“Yes,” Milo said.

“Is Stull Cemetery still standing?”

“Old and abandoned,” Milo relayed, “so easy enough to break into. You won’t have more of an audience than the people in this room.”

“Okay,” Grace murmured, swallowing heavily. “None of the old tricks are going to work, either. They’ll be expecting them. I think they’ll even be expecting the new tricks.”

“This time, it’s different,” Milo said as if they all didn’t know that already.

“Tyler?” Grace whispered.

“I’m ready,” he said back, closing his eyes. “Whenever you are, Grace. I agree with you—I can’t spend another night not able to sleep, thinking about how I’m either going to be dead or Lucifer in a week. It needs to end.”

“There is order again in Heaven,” Milo shared with them, his eyes, angled over their head, unfocused as he listened in on angel radio, a slight frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Everyone is sitting down and preparing for the final fight, letting you two come to them. Michael and Lucifer are waiting for you as well. They know it is soon. We—we can all feel it shifting, under our feet. We can feel the world ending.”

Milo put his head in between his hands, his elbows resting on the table. Grace felt a shiver roll up her spine, uneasy at seeing this reaction come out of an angel always so overconfident, an angel that was obviously powerful enough to be considered famous in Heaven.

“Milo?” Grace whispered, and he looked up at her, looking miserable. “What’s wrong?”

“Four destinies,” he replied softly, his hands falling down helplessly to the tabletop, looking at her sorrowfully. “With your choices today, it’s narrowed down to four different destinies. Four possible endings.”

“And?” Grace murmured, her heart racing.

“Three of them end bloody,” Milo whispered, “and you don’t want to know what happens in the fourth one.”

He was right. She didn’t.

“Okay,” she whispered, and then glanced at Ty and found him watching her. “This is half you, too, Ty. What do you think we should do?”

“Milo,” Ty said, and Milo looked at him, surprised. “When?”

“Soon,” Milo told him, focusing. “Days. Three or less.”

The room stood stagnant for a long moment. Grace felt Castiel’s hands tighten onto the arms of his chair beside her, like he had to physically stop himself from reaching out and holding her from one of those four terrible destinies, like holding her to him would be enough.

She understood the feeling. She felt like a kid in adult clothing, deciding in wartime whether to nuke the northern hemisphere.

“I’m not afraid,” she announced, and Ty nodded back at her.

“Neither am I,” he said, and that moment was the closest they had ever been to each other.

“Ty,” Sam began, but Ty waved him off, hooking on a smirk.

“C’mon, Dad,” he said, his tone struggling to be light. “Are you really going to lecture me about fate?”

Sam reached up and rubbed his face, his fingers pressing into his eyes for a long moment. Allison, not raised a hunter but just as brave and strong as one, stared at her son and watched him sign away his life, and she didn’t cry. She barely even blinked. She was frozen to the world, putting up all of the walls she needed to stay standing, and for the first time in her life Grace didn’t know if that was bravery or cowardice.

Dean was pale. Grace couldn’t even muster the courage to look at Castiel.

“I want to say yes in Lawrence,” Grace told them softly, barely over the hum of the air conditioning, but Dean heard her because he flinched.

“Mine always happens in Detroit, right?” Ty tried to joke, but his voice ended up breaking. “I could go alone. He’d probably send people to get me from the airport. I figure I’m prime real estate.”

“The most powerful humans in the world,” Grace said, quoting what Milo had once told her, and then laughed sullenly.

“Angel,” Milo said, pushing himself slowly to his feet, and Grace’s gaze snapped over to him. “A word?”

Grace nodded and got to her feet, soundlessly joining him as he lead her out of the room, into the hallway. She was barely out of the doorway when she heard the first noise from behind her, Sam’s muffled voice, incredulously asking into the silence, “ _Angel?_ ”

Milo walked so softly that she couldn’t hear his footsteps, and they didn’t stop until they were standing so far back into the residence that Sam and Dean and Castiel wouldn’t dare follow them, not stopping until they reached the shooting range. Milo softly closed the door behind them, flicking on the lights, and they came to life around them as he murmured, “Are you okay?”

“Been better,” she told him, but she really felt sick to her stomach.

“I wish this could be different,” he assured her, shaking his head. “I wish there was anything I could say that would make this easier for you.”

Grace shrugged and then joked, “Prophecy, right?”

Milo stared at her, startled, and, although she didn’t expect him to laugh, she didn’t expect to see devastation flicker across his face, either. He swallowed hard, glancing away from her, before he looked back into her eyes, and he offered her the most pitiful of smiles.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Prophecy.”

He crossed the space in between them and softly took her face in between his hands, and he inclined his head until, first, they were breathing each other’s air—and then he leaned a little further, and his lips brushed hers. She sighed softly and grabbed his shirt, pulling him closer, and he smiled softly into the kiss as their lips moved softly against each other’s, calm and beautiful and careful, like they might both shatter, and Grace closed her eyes and memorized this. Milo pulled her closer, crushing her against him through the softness of their kiss, and she knew he was, too.

And then he pulled away, his hands softly caressing her face, and he whispered, “Goodbye, angel.”

When he had disappeared, and she was sure he was gone, she allowed herself to break down in the giant room all alone, collapsing to her knees as hot tears rolled down her face and sobs wracked through her chest, and she finally realized that she was going to die.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

Grace didn’t come back to the library room. Dean cleared up her plate and heard her words again and again in his head, playing on sick repeat, unable to shake them, and he was only able so sit in that terrible silence for another hour before he got to his feet and went looking for her, not even sure where to start. After some wandering, he found she wasn’t in her room, or his and Cas’s, or Ty’s. He poked his head into the garage and into the swimming pool and into the infirmary. The light was on in the shooting range, but she wasn’t there, either. He was starting to panic before he remembered how many times he had found her at home in the basement, punching and kicking at a bag on days she was upset, and he immediately turned and walked to the gym.

He found her there, still in her pajamas, her hands tied up with tape, her hair sweaty and plastered on her forehead. She punched the bag hard, turning and roundhouse kicking it, and then sent a left uppercut before bouncing backwards on her feet, appraising her enemy.

“Want to talk about it?” Dean asked.

“Nothing you don’t already know,” Grace said, so obviously lying, and it didn’t take a genius. It didn’t even take a paranoid father.

“Where’s Milo?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” she responded before landing another expert kick, bouncing backwards again, breathing heavily. “Heaven, I assume. Helping fix whatever mess he started.”

“What mess did he start?” Dean replied, but Grace ignored him, landing blow after blow against the bag, breathing out through her teeth as she landed one that injured her left hand, pausing to bounce back and shake it off.

Dean wandered onto the mats and stood watching her for a long moment. And then he whispered, “Are you okay?”

“I just signed my own death warrant,” she told him, and then shot him a grin. “Never been more alive.”

“You’re scared.”

She shrugged and then kicked the bag so hard it nearly toppled. Dean watched her a little fearfully as she ground out, “Who in their right mind wouldn’t be?”

“You can talk to me, you know,” he told her softly, watching her bounce, hesitating, listening to him more than she was focusing on letting out her aggression. “I might not agree with your decision—what parent would, you know?—but I’ll listen to you, Grace. I’ll always be here for you.”

Grace paused, still bouncing. And then her hands fell, and she stopped, and Dean hadn’t realized just how many fronts his daughter wore.

She looked exhausted. She ran a hand nervously through her hair, a movement so much like him that he almost smiled, but then she turned her gaze to him, and she just looked lost. She looked like a teenage girl that didn’t know what way was up.

In a heartbeat, Dean crossed the space between them and scooped her into his arms.

“I hated having to make that decision,” she whispered into his chest, clutching him tighter. “I hated having to see those looks on your faces. But you have to understand—I can’t pretend like this is going to end with unicorns and rainbows and happily ever afters. Even Milo admitted that it ends bloody.”

Dean wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to fall into fate. That she could write her own destiny. But, right as he was about to say it, he realized—she _was_.

She was choosing to write the story the way she wanted it written.

How could he argue with that?

So, instead, he whispered, “What are you going to do?”

“What I can,” she responded, and he felt her smile against his chest. “I’m going to do what I can. And then, I’m going to hope it’s enough.”

“I’ll believe in you the best I can,” he told her.

She pulled away and slowly sat down on the mat, and he paused for a moment before following her lead, sitting down in front of her, crossing his legs, his knees knocking against hers. She looked down at her hands before taking a deep breath and letting it out, closing her eyes.

“You don’t want me to say yes,” she whispered.

“Why would I want to lose my daughter?” he whispered back, reaching out and squeezing one of her knees. She flinched, but didn’t otherwise respond, still looking down at her hands, as if too afraid to meet his eyes.

“Do you think I am making the right decision?” she asked, and then said, before he could answer, “I mean, I’ve already made it, and I’m not changing my mind. And I know you said no to Michael when he came knocking but—do you think that this, right now, has the possibility of being okay?”

“I think it’s more about you than the timing,” Dean confessed. “Why?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “For some reason, I can’t help but to think I’ve just made the wrong decision.”

Dean wanted to tell her that she hadn’t, that he didn’t think she had at all. He wanted to give her the confidence she was going to need, the faith that she needed instilled upon her, but he couldn’t open his mouth. It felt like his tongue was plastered to the top of his mouth, and he couldn’t swallow. Grace looked at him, her eyes wide and hopeful and thankful and loving, and she looked so much like Castiel with that kind of blind faith in him that all of the things he could have possibly said stopped somewhere in his throat, making it hard to breathe.

Dean was saved from answering by the door cracking open, Cas looking in, and he smiled when he found Dean and Grace sitting on the mats. He pushed the door the rest of the way open and loped inside, Tyler wandering in behind him, his hands in his pockets. He and Grace locked eyes, and they both looked away.

“I was wondering where the two of you had disappeared to,” Cas said, filling the silence, and Dean couldn’t be more thankful, finally finding the right way to breathe. “Everything alright?”

“Dad,” Grace said, dryly rolling her eyes, and Cas narrowed his eyes in response.

“It’s a simple conversation starter that is typically meant to be rhetorical,” Cas explained to her unnecessarily, scowling, and the response made a grin curl onto her face. He offered her a hand up and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet, and he unconsciously reached up and smoothed down her hair once she was solid. Dean heaved himself onto his feet after not receiving the same offer, grumbling something about chivalry being dead under his breath, and he didn’t miss the way Ty and Grace both looked on the verge of laughing.

“I figure this visit isn’t entirely social?” Grace asked as if all four of them weren’t standing in a bunker that they all held an ownership claim over. Cas glanced at Ty, a tell, and Tyler took a step closer, his hands still stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders curling inward.

“I did some research, and Lucifer isn’t being very quiet about where he is,” Tyler informed her, his voice not even wavering, his shoulders straightening. “There’s a part of Detroit, about a two mile radius, that’s currently twenty degrees below the outside of the circle. Right in the middle is a posh hotel that had to be evacuated two weeks ago because of a sudden mold problem, and no one is staying in it, but people have been seen going in and out still. It doesn’t look like he’s going to come to me.”

“So you’re just going to go to him,” Grace said, nodding as if she expected no less. “When are you leaving?”

“All three of us are leaving once they’re packed and there’s a general game plan,” Tyler told her, not even bothering to smile or lessen the blow of the words. “Should take us about fourteen hours to get there. I wanted to just fly in, but Dad, he—he doesn’t want me to do it alone, and he doesn’t want us to have to deal with any hassle. And I guess I can’t disagree with that.”

Grace nodded slowly, like she got it. And maybe she did—she didn’t even bother to pretend like she didn’t expect Dean and Cas to be with her every single second they could until the very end.

Dean thought about when Sam had said yes, when he thought it had been that simple to trick the Devil, but Lucifer had been the only one to laugh. And then Sam had been gone, and Dean had felt so alone when he walked out of that building without his brother, not knowing where in the world he was and knowing that it no longer mattered, because he wasn’t Sam anymore. He remembered that deep ache, knowing that Sam wasn’t Sam, and he might not ever be again.

Dean thought losing his brother hurt, but Dean had still let him go, knowing that he was also a soldier, and a warrior, and he could handle himself. Dean had raised Sam, and Sam was the most important thing to him, but he knew that he had fought as hard as he could. And now Dean was going to have to look at Lucifer and Michael, wearing Tyler and Grace, and wonder if they should have trained them harder, should have pushed them further, should have prepared them more.

There were so many more questions with them. There was so much more hopelessness and loss. It was the same pain, the same loss, but it cut an entirely different hole in his heart.

It wasn’t right for a parent to have to bury their child. It just didn’t feel like the natural order.

And yet, when had anything in Dean’s life felt natural?

“Are you ready?” Grace asked Tyler, her eyes flashing.

He shrugged and said, “I’ll do what I can, and I’ll have to forgive myself for what can’t be stopped.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Tyler smirked and said, “Hypocrite.”

She shrugged, the comment bouncing right off of her, but her eyes were shaded. “I guess we should go start the game plan.”

“Sure thing,” Ty said, and then glanced over at where Dean and Cas had gravitated to stand next to them, both of them silently watching their exchange. “You two wallflowers going to join us or just forlornly gaze at us from outside the sphere of conversation?”

“Sam was right,” Cas said. “You’re just like Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean objected, scowling at him, but there was no real heat behind it as Grace grabbed onto Tyler’s arm and started to drag him from the room, talking loudly and vividly about times she had been told the same thing, and Dean and Cas stood and watched them leave, neither of them even breathing until their voices were too far away to echo back through the open door.

“They’re calm,” Cas observed, glancing over at him. “Is Grace okay?”

“About as okay as she can be,” Dean told him, shrugging. “Scared, but she’s holding it together. She seemed really shaken from whatever Milo must have said to her.”

“Are we going to talk about Milo?” Cas asked, his eyebrows going up, and Dean looked at him in surprise.

“You see it, too, huh?” he asked.

“She’s your daughter, Dean,” Cas deadpanned before rolling his eyes and saying, “She’s nothing if not predictable when it comes to angels, it seems.”

“I still sometimes don’t trust him.”

“Where is he?”

“Grace assumes he is in Heaven. Said something about him having to clean up a mess he made.”

“Huh,” Cas said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, but then continued, “I just feel like Grace isn’t telling us something about him. He made that odd comment about fighting on my side of the war, and yet Gabriel did not trust him. I keep attempting to grasp for his angel name, and I come up short. It’s—annoying.”

Dean grunted in understanding, glancing at the open doorway as he considered Cas’s points, but they both knew it was useless to worry about it now, when there were bigger things for them to think about. Yet it still nagged at Dean’s mind, like the answer was so obvious, like someone had already told him and he had just forgotten.

Cas took a deep breath and then said, “I don’t think I am ready for this to end.”

“I know I’m not,” Dean murmured before glancing over and offering him a smile. “But I get why Grace and Tyler don’t want to wait around. Not-knowing can be torture.”

“I’m scared,” Cas whispered, and he closed his eyes.

“I am, too,” Dean responded just as lowly, reaching out to grab Cas’s hand and tug on it until he opened those brilliant blue eyes. “But we’ve pulled off some ridiculous miracles with less.”

Cas tried to smile, and Dean figured that was good enough.

“We should go see what the others are writing up for this plan,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “Grace probably won’t want to stick around for much longer if we aren’t staying here for anything.”

Cas flinched but said, “Okay.”

Dean didn’t let go of Cas’s hand as they walked into the living room, and he didn’t let go when they all gave a temporary goodbye to Sam and Allison and Tyler, and he didn’t let go when he saw Grace watch Ty walk away like she was watching him bleed out, and he didn’t let go when she whispered into the newfound silence of the bunker that she wanted to go to Lawrence, that she couldn’t hide anymore.

Dean let go only to walk back to his and Cas’s room to repack what little of the bag had been touched, leaving Cas to speak to Grace alone for one last time before the inevitable big event, and Dean took the time alone to consider how he would throw himself in front of Grace’s destiny, or how he would die trying to protect her from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Slang


	14. Losing

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

It was about a four hour drive to Lawrence, and Grace spent the entirety of it sitting in the backseat with her head against the window, watching Kansas rush past, letting the sound of all of her favorite albums hum through the car. Her parents didn’t speak. After they had said goodbye to Tyler and Sam and Allison, and after they had locked the bunker door behind them, there wasn’t much left to say.

She had barely been able to look at Tyler when he walked away knowing that the next time she would see him, he wouldn’t be _him_.

She wouldn’t be her.

Grace closed her eyes, thinking only about the cold glass on her skin.

Grace wanted to wish that she and Tyler were not the people they were, because then they wouldn’t want to walk into their fates with this quickened pace. Others would stall, would hide away for days in the name of finding a loophole, but Grace and Tyler weren’t raised to be intimidated at the idea of what _could_ happen. They weren’t even afraid of the certainty behind it. Both of them couldn’t sit around, so they moved into immediate action. They knew they wouldn’t be able to sleep, to eat, to sit around and try to read a book to find a way to weasel their way from Heaven and Hell, and they both knew it would be no use trying. They were both ready to walk into it head-on and let the chips fall as they may.

When they hit the Lawrence city limits, Grace picked her head off of the window and asked, “Dad?”

“Hmm?” Dean and Cas both responded automatically, and then all three of them burst into laughter from something familiar that had happened a million times, when she would call for her father from her room and one would respond and she would have to yell back, _The other one_.

“Dean,” she clarified, still smiling. “Do you—this is a weird question, but do you think your old house is still standing?”

“Maybe,” Dean said, sounding surprised, and he glanced back at her for a moment before looking back to the road, taking a turn. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m kind of curious,” she confessed, twisting a strand of hair nervously around her finger, biting on her lip. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve always kind of wanted to see where it all started, you know?”

Dean didn’t respond, but he did glance over at Castiel, who raised his eyebrows in a silent response.

“We should go check it out, then,” Dean said casually, but the atmosphere was gathering tension like dust gathers over time. “Can’t hurt to look, right?”

They took a detour to check into a slightly-seedy motel on the outskirts of town, dropping their bags onto the beds—Grace hesitating to do so, not wanting to say out loud that she had a feeling she would not be returning to this room—and they sat back in the Impala, the air charged with a new unanswered question, and an entirely different answer no one wanted to hear.

It took about twenty minutes to pull onto Dean’s childhood street from their motel, but Grace watched the town pass at every turn, every single mile. Castiel seemed curious, too, gazing eagerly out of the window, taking in the town like he hadn’t seen it before.

And maybe he hadn’t. Maybe, this town just stayed solidly in Dean’s past, locked away with so many terrible memories, and he hadn’t even let Castiel see into the madness.

Grace almost felt guilty before she glanced the look of ease on Dean’s face, the only stress the same that she had seen at the corners of his eyes ever since breakfast this morning, so she figured that maybe the ghosts were so far back in time that Dean almost couldn’t remember their influence anymore.

They pulled up in front of a two-story home and Dean turned the car off, the Impala’s rumbling pulled out from under Grace’s feet like a rug under her ignorance of the future, sending her staggering. She looked up at the house eagerly, curiously, and she somehow wasn’t surprised by what she saw.

“This is it,” Dean announced unnecessarily, gazing up at it from the windshield. “Surprised the old thing is still standing. It’s seen a couple of decades, and a fire.”

“We should go in,” Grace said.

“Grace, that’s rude,” Castiel reprimanded, frowning, and she couldn’t help but to laugh.

“There’s a condemn notice on the door, bright eyes,” she pointed out to Castiel, grinning. “No one is home. It’ll probably take less than thirty seconds to pick that lock.”

“You’re a terrible influence,” Dean said, but he was already getting out of the car.

Castiel obviously seemed to think this was a strange idea, but he still sighed and followed Grace as she climbed out, bouncing on her feet, smiling excitedly. The three of them crossed casually to the doorway, the entire street either vacant or silent, no movement but theirs it seemed for miles, and Dean didn’t pause before dropping down onto one knee and picking at the lock. Castiel hovered behind him, trying to shield him from street view, and Grace didn’t bother to point out that both of them were about as subtle as a red brick to the face.

The lock clicked, and Dean tugged the door open.

It was empty. Whatever family or couple had lived there before the notice had left it behind, taking everything, leaving behind only a skeleton. Grace breathed in an air of stale dust and coughed, raising her arm to cover her nose to keep from sneezing. Dean closed the door behind them, glancing around, seeming unaffected. Castiel rubbed at his eyes, but otherwise didn’t comment.

“The last time I was in here, my mother took down a poltergeist,” Dean said in an attempt to break the tension, grinning at them.

Grace glanced curiously into the living room space, and then ducked across the way to look into the kitchen, dropping her arm once her respiratory system seemed to adjust. She reached out to flick on the light but this place must not have had electricity in some time. Grace frowned around at everything.

“Why did it say it was condemned?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Shitty foundation,” Dean told her, and then cut her a look. “So be careful.”

She looked over her shoulder just to make sure he would be able to see her roll her eyes.

“It’s so much smaller than I remember,” Dean said, sounding truly surprised, and glanced out the back door. “Even the yard seems smaller. I remember, when Sam was a baby, Mom used to put him in this little bouncy thing on the back porch while she watched me run around like a little heathen. I kept trying to talk her into letting Sammy come in the kiddie pool with me, and she kept rolling her eyes and telling me that babies can’t swim. I told her I wanted to teach him.”

“Can we go upstairs?” she asked after a moment of reverent silence, and then raised her hands innocently when Castiel’s eyes sharply narrowed. “It’s not like we’re going to be _living_ up there—I just want to see which rooms are which.”

Castiel was always a great debater, but he always lost when Dean and Grace teamed up together, as if he couldn’t handle opposing two Winchesters at the same time, so they ended up walking up the stairs about a minute later, Dean leading the way and Castiel trailing nervously behind them. With every step Grace took, she felt something uneasy dip into her stomach, some kind of instinct or paranoia kicking in, but she pushed it out of the way, curiosity once again being the cause of death to that cat.

Dean nudged open one of the doors and narrated, “Here’s the bathroom. My room’s next door—used to wake me up every time someone took a shower or flushed the toilet.”

Grace ducked to look inside of the bedroom, pacing over to glance out the window, and she traced the dusty pane with her fingertips, blowing the dust and dirt off of her fingers as she glanced out. “This tree would have been kick-ass if you all had still been here when you were a teenager.”

Castiel rolled his eyes but Dean laughed, bumping his shoulder against Castiel’s as he moved out of the way to let Grace go in front of them, and she saw the soft expression come over the ex-angel’s face when he looked at the man next to him, and a soft voice in the back of her mind assured her that the two of them would be okay when she was gone. That they loved each other enough not to push each other away, but instead to hold themselves closer.

She swallowed the lump in her throat as she looked into John and Mary’s old room, imagining what it would have been like if they had lived. She imagined a trip or two a year to the grandparents’ house, getting doted on by Mary and playing catch in the backyard with John, and she couldn’t help but to feel mournful for the future she would never have.

“That’s the nursery,” Dean whispered, his eyes on the last door, the room overlooking the street on the side opposite John and Mary’s, and it was the words he didn’t say that were the loudest.

Grace slowly reached out and nudged open the door. She immediately cried out, jumping backwards.

“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” the man told her, smiling kindly. “I realize, in hindsight, that this was perhaps not the wisest room in which to chose to appear unannounced and unanticipated.”

Dean growled, reaching out and tugging Grace closer to him on instinct, and he greeted flatly, “ _Michael_.”

“Hello again, Dean, Castiel,” Michael wearing a man who would have been a Winchester replied, nodding to each of Grace’s parents cordially before turning his eyes eagerly to Grace, the smile not dropping for a moment. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Grace, although the circumstances do make this a forlorn ordeal.”

The sky was growing darker outside, and the room did not have lights, but it seemed like Michael was in unordinary detail, like if a spotlight were on him. Everything stood out in the dark contrast, like his grace was a nightlight, allowing for him to seem like a beacon to a struggling ship out in the sea. Grace was not as easily persuaded, already feeling sick to her stomach just looking into his eyes.

She should have listened to the instincts that had told her to turn around, and to walk away. Maybe then she would have had the extra time of the twenty-minute car ride with her parents. Maybe then she would have been able to say some of the words that had been choking her for the last several hours since she had been back on the Earth’s surface.

It suddenly felt too soon. She suddenly realized that she _wasn’t_ ready—and it was too late.

As if Dean could read her mind, his hands tightened on her arms. Castiel reached out and put his hand on the small of her back, a comforting gesture of security, not taking his eyes off of the almighty archangel for a moment.

Her present company’s reactions did not ease her nerves in the slightest.

“I apologize for Zachariah’s actions,” Michael suddenly told Grace, sighing lightly like a parent who has dealt with so many misconducts. “He did not necessarily act with courtesy—he was never known to be the type.”

“Cut the pleasantries,” Grace snapped at him, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t need you to act like a nice guy in some attempt to impress me. I know who you are and what you have done.”

“And yet, you have still chosen to agree to be my vessel,” Michael said, his smile not faltering for a moment. “Perhaps that says many things of your own character, Miss Grace Mary.”

“Why are you here?” Dean demanded unkindly, his eyes flashing, his fingers curling even tighter around Grace, and she suddenly thought that he was going to push her away and tell her to run, especially when Michael laughed at the question, his mouth curling into a smirk that could only be unkind.

“I felt the decision be made,” Michael told Dean like he was telling him it was sunny with a ten percent chance of rain. “With the rate in which Grace and Tyler seem to be moving, I figured she would be willing to pull the Band-Aid off sooner rather than later.”

She had, until her hand had been on the Band-Aid, flexing to pull it from her skin. Now, she was hesitating, and she was rethinking every decision back from this point and wondering where she could have afforded to backtrack, to step back and wonder if this was the right decision.

If she was standing in the heat of the moment wondering about her decision to join the team of the so-called good guys, Grace couldn’t imagine what Ty would feel like facing off against Lucifer.

She closed her eyes, and she took a deep breath.

“It’s too soon,” Castiel tried to object, shifting forward so he was angled in front of Grace, blocking Michael from her, as if the archangel would harm her. Michael watched the movement with amusement. “There is still hours until Tyler agrees, and even more until the end of days. Why are you coming for permission now, because I know it is not because you have Grace’s interests in mind.”

“We have much work to do,” Michael said, nodding hospitably toward Grace, and her stomach flipped, because she knew she would have no say in what plans he had. “The order in Heaven has just barely been restored, and it would do all parties well if we had the extra hours to clean up some of Lucifer’s unsavory messes. Our brother has made quite the mess of the northern European continent in an attempt to pass the time before this moment.”

“He is not my brother,” Castiel said flatly, his jaw clenching.

Michael looked at Castiel sadly before murmuring, “He once was. No matter how . . . _estranged_ , Lucifer has always been of the same breed. The loss the angels faced when you chose humanity, Castiel, is one that will be told of for centuries. It is as painful to recall as the Fall.”

“If only you had been there,” Castiel remarked coldly, and Michael’s eyes flashed.

“I am finished with delaying the inevitable,” Michael announced, and it was as if the entire home got about twenty degrees colder. He turned his gaze on Grace, and she suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Would you be willing to grant me the permission to use you as my vessel?”

Grace opened her mouth to say the words, to rip off the Band-Aid, but her whole entire world shattered around her when it was Dean’s voice that brokenly said, “Yes.”

“Dean,” Castiel whispered, horrified, turning to face his husband so frantically that he nearly stumbled. His eyes were wide, terrified, but Dean was firm and tall and his head was high, his jaw clenched, but he was ashen from the moment Castiel spoke, like his name in that voice was enough to shatter him.

“I said _yes_ , you son of a bitch,” Dean growled, stepping in front of Grace, her parents forming a human shield in front of her, and her stomach flipped and her internal voice was screaming at her to act, to move, but she only managed to stare in unconcealed horror when Dean yelled at Michael, “Use _me_!”

Michael looked Dean right in the eye when he said, “No.”

And, somehow, that decided it.

Grace swallowed her fear and pushed past Dean, ducking from his grasp when he helplessly reached to pull her back, turning around and giving her parents a soft, sorrowful, apologetic look as she took an extra step in the room, this time becoming the one standing between the archangel and her family, the shield and the sword, and she offered her parents one last smile before turning to fully face Michael. He stood looking at her, his eyebrows raised curiously, smirking at her because he didn’t need to ask again.

“Grace?” Dean whispered like it would be enough to pull her back to them, to realize her mistake. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t turn back. She wouldn’t even let the tears fall.

Instead, Grace acted as though she hadn’t heard him. She pretended as though she wasn’t a machine breaking into a million different parts as she straightened, looking Michael head-on, thinking about death and an angel with blue eyes that kissed her, and she took a deep breath.

“Yes,” she whispered, her own silent prayer.

Michael smiled, and then the world was suddenly too bright.

“Grace!” she heard Castiel cry as she was enveloped by the blinding light, and then she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, nothing but the sound of her own heart racing and her own screaming, and her chest was burning and her skin was on fire and she thought there had to be something wrong, she couldn’t possibly be the right vessel, she was going to explode, no human skin could contain a grace like this, no human could survive—

and then it was over.

 _Hello, Grace_ , Michael said from inside of her mind, and she knew it was over. 

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

It was easy to lose the most important thing in his life.

There was a burst of burning light, and then it was gone. Grace stood in the same spot, and Adam’s body was gone, and there was something so foreign in the way she was holding herself, something so _other_ , that they knew she was gone. Dean had whispered her name one more time, like that would be enough to save her, and Michael had just tilted her head and looked at them. And then she was gone.

Dean and Castiel stood in that doorway clutching each other for a long time, tight enough that they would later find bruises on each other’s wrists, and the bottom of Dean’s shirt would be torn. But it felt like they couldn’t move. They were anchored in that moment of horror and grief, and Grace’s voice ringing soft and confident and clear when she said _Yes_.

Dean barely remembers getting in the Impala and driving back to the motel, but then they were there.

Cas brought Grace’s bag out to the Impala and tucked it in the trunk. Dean wanted to thank him, but he knew his husband hadn’t done it to be thanked. He had done it because he couldn’t bare to look at it and know that they had left Grace behind in the same house where Dean had lost enough.

They sat together on one of the beds, barely touching, for a long time. Dean only moved to answer his phone when Sam called, and his stomach felt like it was being eaten by acid when his brother’s guarded voice said, “It’s done.”

“Yeah,” Dean had replied. “It is here, too.”

Dean and Cas moved on autopilot. Dean slept for two hours, and Cas slept for three. They each ate two bites of the same McDonald’s breakfast sandwich, and then threw it out. They took their turns showering, putting on fresh clothes, brushing their teeth side by side in the mirror. Everything felt like walking through a dream until there was a knock on the door, and Dean pulled it open to reveal Sam and Allison’s ashen faces.

“It’s happening at midday,” Sam told Dean, and Dean automatically glanced at the clock, wincing when he saw the sun was already up, the world moving on while his came to a close. Sam and Allison joined them in their silent vigil, four parents who weren’t really parents anymore sitting together, not mentioning what they had lost, counting down until the time that they would inevitably lose everything else.

When the world only had hours left, the four of them got up, sat in the Impala, and drove to Stull Cemetery, all of them holding their tongues, wanting to argue they would need two cars, but none of them were fooling each other. At best, they would need one more seat, and there wouldn’t ever be enough room for the grief that would linger with them the next time they stepped inside of this automobile.

If they even got the chance. If that was even how the fight ended.

Dean felt like he was swallowing razor blades.

There had been a terror when he and Cas had found out Grace was missing, that she might be in trouble. That feeling was something so different. Dean had felt like his world was collapsing. He almost wished he could go back in time, that he could warn himself, and he would tell himself that he didn’t even know the beginning about what it feels like to lose his daughter.

When they pulled into Stull Cemetery, Grace/Michael was waiting for them.

She was standing at the same space where Dean had fallen to his knees years before, mourning the loss of his brother, at the edge of the entrance to Lucifer’s cage. Grace/Michael nodded to them as they stepped out of the car, lingering by the doors, and Dean crossed to stand with Cas, reaching his hand out and entwining it with one of Cas’s as they stared at their daughter, who was not their daughter anymore, and they watched the soldier of Heaven stand with a straight back and an emotionless face, her hands clasped before her, her eyes unwavering on the gates of the cemetery.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked Dean, catching him off-guard, but Dean somehow managed to send him a smile and say, “As okay as I have to be.”

Sam nodded, watching the cemetery gates the same as Grace/Michael.

“Yeah,” he murmured, his eyes sad. “Me too.”

The gates blew open at exactly noon, the sun glaring down from the highest place in the sky, and Tyler/Lucifer sauntered through, his arms swinging on either side of him, whistling a cheerful tune. His eyes were crazed, excited. His smirk was unearthly and dangerous. Even though his limbs were still too long for his gangly body, Dean would have been afraid of his fifteen-year-old boy even without knowing he had the Devil inside of him.

Tyler/Lucifer tipped his imaginary hat at the group of Winchesters as he passed before laughing, turning his eyes to his brother, and Dean watched the happiness turn predatory, angry, vengeful, and sad. Cas clenched at Dean’s wrist as Grace/Michael slowly turned to face him head-on as he approached, not moving her stance, barely even angling her head to accommodate for his height.

“Michael,” Tyler/Lucifer greeted with a grin. “Little time, no see, brother. I see that you have managed to fix that little mayhem that broke out in Heaven.”

“They were more than happy to fall back in line when I appeared as Grace,” Grace/Michael responded amicably, her eyes unwavering on his. “The angels know their place. That was always your mightiest flaw.”

Lucifer threw his head back and laughed.

“And dear Castiel’s as well, if you don’t mind me saying,” Tyler/Lucifer corrected his brother, turning to shoot Cas a wicked smirk. “Look at us, all rebellious, for two completely different reasons. The man who was king, and the man who would be king.”

“You only wished you were king,” Michael whispered, turning her gaze away from him only to glance straight upward, as if looking to Heaven itself. “There is no king in Heaven. There is barely even a God. The ways have changed in such a short amount of time.”

Tyler/Lucifer whistled, smiling mischievously, and purred, “You mean Milo?”

“Of course,” Grace/Michael said, and then laughed.

Dean glanced to Cas, but Cas didn’t look away from the duo, his face stressed, his hand gripping Dean like he was the only one keeping him from getting sucked back into the world of the angels. Dean glanced to Sammy and Allison and found them staring at their son, studying the scene in front of them, Allison looking desperate and Sam looking resigned. Sam looked as though he had already seen the destruction, the torture, and he was waiting for the deathblow.

Dean snapped his gaze away from them, looking back to Grace and Tyler as puppets, trying not to think about the big picture, trying to just focus on this fight, and to mourn later.

It didn’t work. It felt like there was hot lava trapped inside of his chest.

“It’s not this amazing in the cage, is it, Michael?” Tyler/Lucifer suddenly asked, tilting his head back into the sunshine, breathing in deeply. “What a world our Father created. It will be an honor to restore it.”

“You know I cannot allow your version of restoration, brother,” Grace/Michael said, tilting her head as she looked at him, her face stone and fire. “I knew what you wished upon this world the day you fell from Heaven, and I would not allow it then. I will fight to the end to stop you from allowing it that fate.”

“We shall see,” Lucifer said, and then shrugged.

He paced away from Grace/Michael, over to a nearby gravestone, where he reached down and rubbed a hand over the top before he said casually, “Nice try, Grace.”

Cas gripped Dean’s arm harder, his breath catching, and they heard Allison inhale sharply in surprise. An angel blade dropped from Grace’s sleeve and she smirked before telling Tyler/Lucifer, “I had you going for a minute.”

“You did,” he said, but he looked angry when he turned to her fully. “Where is Michael?”

“Contained,” she told him casually, smiling and reaching up her free hand to tap at her temple. Tyler/Lucifer’s eyes were wild as he surged forward a couple of steps, his own angel blade appearing in his hand, and Dean was suddenly frozen with pride and disbelief over his daughter, and fear that Lucifer’s rage would be enough to tear her limb from limb.

Grace didn’t seem as concerned. She even glanced over to her family, watching from the sidelines, and winked.

“Surprise,” she announced to Lucifer with a smile.

“You’re such a fool, Grace Winchester, to think you will be able to win against me with feeble human strength,” Tyler/Lucifer growled, stepping closer to her, raising his own blade, and she watched him move like a predator watches prey. Dean couldn’t decide if he was more proud of his daughter’s bravery, or more terrified at her courage.

Grace didn’t even bat an eye. She didn’t even comment. She just watched Tyler/Lucifer pace closer to her, watched him calculate his words, and then watched him take a long breath.

“You must know now,” Tyler/Lucifer spoke slowly, “how this will end.”

“I have seen it all,” Grace affirmed, Michael trapped inside of her mind, and she watched the body of her cousin move, watched the alien mannerisms that came with the possession. “Michael was in control for a long time, and I saw what he knows. I have seen the endings.”

“And what have you earned from that viewpoint?”

“I have learned,” Grace murmured, his voice carrying with the wind, “that it is impossible to fight destiny. Destiny is not there to be manipulated. It is there for us to choose the way in which we reach it. I know how this will end, and I have free will because I can choose how to implement that ending.”

Tyler/Lucifer watched her, eyes cold, as she took a deep breath.

“It is all about choice,” she said, and then she dropped her blade.

“Grace!” Dean screamed, panicked, but neither of them looked at him. Cas was saying something, whispering to him, his voice panicked, but Dean couldn’t hear words, not when Grace was standing vulnerable in front of Lucifer himself, weaponless and innocent, her eyes wide and truthful, her expression determined and resigned.

“I have made my choice,” she bravely announced to Lucifer, “and that choice is to not kill Tyler.”

Tyler/Lucifer paused, staring at her in disbelief. And then he whispered so, so sadly, “You stupid girl.”

“I chose family,” Grace told him, and it took until she smiled for Dean to see the tears in her eyes as she asked, “And isn’t that kind of the whole point?”

Tyler/Lucifer didn’t respond. Instead, he took one step forward, and shoved the angel blade into her stomach.

“Grace!” Dean screamed again, this time more desperate, his voice echoing for what had to be miles, all of the world slowing down and falling away until he saw only one thing, and that was Grace standing there, her eyes wide and looking into Tyler/Lucifer’s, her hands rising as if to touch the angel blade in her stomach, her mouth open in a silent question. Time stood still. And then Grace coughed, and blood splattered out of her mouth.

Suddenly, her eyes flashed blue, and she was desperate.

“Brother,” Michael coughed, reaching for Tyler/Lucifer, and his jaw clenched as he looked down at his older brother, at the mighty archangel reaching for him, practically begging to be saved from the final blow. And then Michael screamed, and his eyes flashed blue again, and Grace was back to coughing and gasping, her hands clutching at the blade.

Dean would have fallen to his knees if Cas wasn’t holding his arm so tightly. Dean thought he might anyway, and he would just drag Cas down with him.

“It’s okay, Tyler,” Grace whispered, tears rolling down her face, her eyes on the blade, her hands clutching over Tyler/Lucifer’s. “I’m here. I’m not gonna leave you. I’m here.”

Grace looked up at Tyler/Lucifer, and she closed her eyes.

Tyler/Lucifer shoved the blade in deeper, digging it in for the kill, and Grace screamed as she glowed with white light, the whole world suddenly glowing too bright, like the sun was going to explode and Dean, for a wild moment, thought that this was how the world would end—with Grace, with her burning too bright.

And then the light went out, and Grace was on the ground on her back, her arms stretched out at her sides. Crucified.

Her body was outlined by a pair of angel wings that spanned at least a hundred yards, the greatest and most horrifying thing that Dean had ever before seen.

He felt his legs failing him as he whispered, “Grace?”

But she was gone. Blood stained her lips, and her eyes were closed, and her chest was not moving. Tyler/Lucifer was standing over her body, staring down at her with the bloodied blade in his hand, his head tilted, his face sorrowful.

“Goodbye, brother,” Lucifer whispered, closing his eyes.

Cas was shaking his head. Not saying anything, just shaking his head, denying it all, his eyes not leaving Grace’s body. Dean clutched at Cas, trying to keep himself upright, feeling like he was about to either vomit or start screaming. Sam suddenly reached out, grabbing Dean—he hadn’t even realized he had started to pitch forward, moments from falling to his knees.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, horrified, but none of them said anything else, because Tyler/Lucifer suddenly looked up as if just remembering he was not alone, and he glanced around at all of them, his gaze stopping at Dean, and a cruel grin covered his lips.

“Didn’t I tell you once, long ago in another world, Dean?” he demanded, his voice restrained hysterical laughter. “I win. So, I win. No matter what choices you make or details you alter. I always win. And here I stand.”

Tyler/Lucifer spread his arms, grinning broadly, more alive than Dean had ever seen him. Dean wondered if Lucifer had wings, and if they were spread with celebration, and if they were glowing brightly and he just couldn’t see them because his whole entire world was filled with the light of a grace burning out of his daughter, burning with the red of the blood still on her lips, on the wings singed on the earth around where she fell to save the life of the baby cousin she had always loved with her whole heart.

Tyler/Lucifer took another large step closer to them, his eyes wild, and he said, “The future is in stone with Grace’s sacrifice. She has set everything into motion.” Lucifer sighed lightly. “Fate is so tedious.”

“I couldn’t agree more, brother,” Grace/Michael said from behind him, eyes burning cold and blue.

Tyler/Lucifer whirled around, nearly losing his balance. Dean had never seen an angel look so ungraceful. Dean had never heard his husband make a sound so horrifically desperate.

Grace/Michael burned with intensity other than life itself when she told him softly, sternly, like a parent scolding a child, “You should have known better.”

“Michael,” Tyler/Lucifer whispered, going ashen, staring at his older brother in horror.

And then Grace/Michael reached forward, and her hand sunk into Tyler’s chest.

There wasn’t a show. There wasn’t screaming. There was just Grace/Michael, staring without expression at Tyler/Lucifer as his face contorted into pain and fear, her hand twisting in his chest, and Dean heard Sam scream something that was lost in the sound of screeching white noise, the same sound that Dean had heard so long ago when Castiel had tried to use his true voice to speak with him. Tyler’s chest glowed but neither of the angels appeared to be saying anything as the cage before them opened with no key, and Grace/Michael looked straight into Tyler’s eyes right before she ripped the angel from his body.

Tyler fell to his knees as Grace/Michael crushed Lucifer’s grace and consciousness in her fingers, containing the blast of his true form with her celestial might, reaching her hand out and letting the cage swallow it whole, the angel sound screaming so loud Dean’s ears began to bleed, and then her mouth twitched into a smirk as the entire world went calm and she whispered, “Farewell, little brother.”

For a moment, no one moved. And then Tyler gasped, clutching at his chest, and demanded, “Grace?”

She looked over at him, her gaze hard and cold.

“Grace is dead,” Michael told Tyler harshly and turned away from him, looking back to the cage, her head tilted the same way in which Lucifer had looked down at her body. “I suppose I should give you my condolences.”

That was the moment Dean started screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> Heehee! Hope you liked that!
> 
> I'm planning on posting a few smaller fics in the next couple of days, and it would mean a lot to me if you took the time to check them out! 
> 
> xo Slang


	15. Ending

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

She opened her eyes, and she found herself in a white room.

Grace frowned, glancing around, confused, taking a heavy step forward as she turned. The four walls, the floor, the ceiling, it was all a bright white, so bright it was almost impossible to look at it, no doors or windows. Grace followed the lines of the walls with her eyes, her frown deepening, and she murmured to herself, “I’m either dead or insane.”

“I’m surprised it’s not insane, with that attitude,” a familiar voice commented nonchalantly from behind her, and Grace gasped and whirled. Milo grinned at her, his eyes soft as silk. “Hello, Grace.”

“Milo,” she whispered, surprised, flashes of lights and colors and scenes like something from a movie spinning around in her head, blurred at the edges, like she was intoxicated, but she had never felt more sober. “What’s going on?”

“You’re dead,” he commented kindly, and then gestured around. “This is your canvas, Grace. This is whatever you want it to look like. How about you plop us somewhere nice before you get your memories back and I have some explaining to do?”

“Somewhere . . . nice?” she asked softly, blinking slowly.

“Here,” he whispered, smiling at her calmly. “Let me.”

The white walls suddenly dropped, tumbling out of existence, and Grace jumped as the ground suddenly sprouted healthy green grass, trees replacing walls, flowers growing out of the earth and bushes, her and Milo standing in the middle of a clearing she had seen one time before. She glanced around, startled, at the bright blue sky, at the man flying a kite off in the distance, at the light breeze that rumpled through the trees, bringing with it the smell of wildflowers and wet soil.

“I’m dead,” she said.

“Yes,” Milo replied, watching her closely, the picture of ease with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, his hair messy, his face unshaven. He looked at her imploringly, pityingly, before he asked her, “Do you remember what happened?”

And then, suddenly, she did.

“What happened with the apocalypse?” she demanded, stumbling forward, looking up at Milo desperately, and his eyes flashed with something like dread before he looked away sharply, to the trees. “Milo, don’t ignore me, what happened?”

“I can’t ruin the punch line,” Milo explained to her easily, calmly. His eyes didn’t stray from hers, watching for her reaction, but Grace felt too cold to move. “But I hope you’re happy with your choices thus far.”

“You aren’t,” she observed through frozen lips, and he snorted, looking away, but he didn’t seem angry—he was upset, and sad, but not angry.

“All of you Winchesters are the same, did you know that?” he demanded, turning on her, his eyes blue fire. “Always throwing your lives away for each other, not giving a damn about who else you hurt in the process. You’re more than happy to stand here in Heaven even if it means that your cousin will wither away inside of his own mind with guilt, if he even ends up living to tell the tale. None of you ever thought of the consequences of your actions and how much it will hurt others.”

“What,” she whispered. “Like you?”

Milo swallowed too hard and then looked away, clenching his jaw.

“What happens now, then?” she asked him, spreading her hands. “Michael wins, returns to Heaven with my body, and life goes on as usual?”

“That depends,” he replied, “on your choice.”

“I’ve _made_ my choice,” she screamed, pointing desperately around at the meadow, tears welling in her eyes. “I saw the endings, and I chose to save Tyler, no matter what the rest of the ending looked like. I’m dead—there are _no more_ choices.”

“You don’t know as much about life and death,” Milo whispered, “as I do.”

She stared at him for a moment, not knowing what to say, and then it hit her. She blinked, straightening up, her hands falling limply down to her sides as she blinked at Milo, and then said, “Oh.”

“Oh,” he said back, bitterly, and then laughed.

“Milo,” she whispered, “are you God?”

“Maybe someday,” Milo murmured, closing his eyes as another breeze passed them by, his hair ruffling.

She watched him for a moment, looking at a man who looked so human, a man who made human choices, but he was the most inhuman of all angels, of all creatures. This man was not a man, but she loved him like one, and he loved her like them, and that was why they were standing right here. There was another choice to be made, and it was always Grace’s job, her destiny, to make the hard decisions. Somehow, it was always her duty to decide which way they fall.

“I understand now,” she announced.

“Do you?” he asked, and then smiled humorlessly.

“That’s the reason you were the one that raised the archangels, and the others,” Grace whispered, taking a step closer to him, and he watched that step carefully, looking like he wanted to pull her closer just as much as he wanted to push her away, and he swallowed hard, looking into her eyes, silently willing her to understand, and she was starting to get it. “It always had to be you—and not only because it’s prophecy. You were the only angel that could ever do those things. You’re the only one powerful enough to open the cage.”

“When you made the lock,” Milo told her slowly, “it’s easy to open it without the key. With me around, I can control it with just a thought. I guess you could say that I am the master key.”

“How long have you been hiding from what you are?”

“I left before Gabriel did,” Milo informed her before he laughed a little, closing his eyes. “I made it so that my job could run at the hands of an overseer, and then I stepped back. I have been alone for so long, a ghost through the ages. I have slipped between Heaven and Earth, but I have been truly welcome in neither. It was until I met you that I was ever trusted so implicitly. It was—staggering. But I should have known—you have always been my prophecy, Grace. I should have known.”

Grace didn’t breathe when Milo said, “I could have been the angel of life, but everyone must die.”

“Milo,” she whispered.

“Do you truly understand now, Grace?” Milo asked her, and his voice broke. “Do you understand why I had to do it? I had to fulfill all of those prophecies, all of those destinies and endings, just to make it here. Just to get to this one, final prophecy, mine and yours.”

“What is the prophecy?” she asked him softly, taking another step forward, and she was so close that his clothes brushed her in the breeze.

“I had to bring you to the edge of the world,” he murmured, “for this.”

He spread his hands, and the breeze sped up. She glanced around nervously, half expected company, but it was just her and Milo on the hallowed ground of Heaven, standing at the edge of the earth, standing in the balance of the last choice Grace will have to make today.

“We are at the tollbooth, angel,” Milo told her, moving those outstretched hands to cradle her face, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes. “It’s time to choose to keep straight, or to turn back.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded, wanting to back away to see his face clearly, but she couldn’t move. She was putty in his hands, and she melted against him as his fingertips pressed into her hair. He smiled softly, looking so at peace, and he waited to answer until he leaned up and pressed a kiss onto her forehead, closing his eyes.

“This time, you choose your own ending, beautiful,” he told her, smiling. “This choice is for you, and not for your family, or for the world, or anything else—this decision is to be made only for what _you_ want. This is not destiny—this is free will. You have two choices: keep moving forward and accept your death and live the rest of your existence in Heaven. Or, you can turn around.”

Her eyes widened, surprised.

“You either have to accept your fate, or change it,” he told her, shrugging. “Life in paradise is guaranteed, thoughtless, enjoyable. You are not alone here. And, of course, you are also not alone down on the surface. Like I said before—this is a choice for you, and you alone.”

“How am I supposed to make the kind of decision?” she demanded harshly, her voice hitching, and she reached up to grab at Milo’s jacket, and his hands reached up to cradle her face in response. She closed her eyes at the feel of his skin on hers, shaking. “What should I do, Milo?”

“I can’t answer that for you, angel,” he told her softly, “but I will follow you anywhere. You will never be alone, no matter what choice you make. Everything will be okay.”

“The angel of death,” she whispered.

“Archangel,” he corrected dryly, holding her face a little tighter.

She looked at Milo, thinking about the apocalypse she left behind, thinking about the family she had here that would love and protect her. She thought about the final desperate scream of her father, and she thought about what it would be like to stand at the gates waiting for him when he walked into Heaven for the last time. She wondered if her choices would change, if she turned around and went home.

She looked up at the man she loved, the archangel of death, and she felt the tears begin to fall.

And Milo knew her decision. Of course he knew. He leaned down and kissed her forehead again, pulling her closer to his body, crushing her, and he whispered, “It’s okay, Grace. It’s okay. I’m here.”

She closed her eyes, and she whispered her final choice.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

“You son of a bitch, let her go!” Dean thundered, bounding forward with clenched fists, not knowing what exactly he was planning on doing but not caring, but then Cas grabbed his arm and tugged him back hard enough to slam him against the Impala, holding him there. Dean looked up into Cas’s wild eyes and saw all of his grief, all of his rage, all of his desperation that was just bubbling to the surface, boiling over, and Dean knew he was breaking into pieces but Cas was already ripped apart, scattered in the wind, so far lost that his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Don’t,” Cas told him, his voice breaking, and the tears fell as he gripped at Dean’s shirt, looking at him with fire. “Don’t do something stupid. Just, please, don’t. I can’t lose you too.”

Cas suddenly let him go, turning away and rubbing at his face. Dean straightened up slowly, reaching for Cas, and he managed only to whisper his name and grip at his shirt sleeve before Cas was turning his burning gaze onto the archangel wearing their daughter, watching their exchange with an arched eyebrow, as if feigning interest.

“Why won’t you bring her back to life?” Castiel demanded unkindly, staring Michael down, and Dean wondered how he could bear to look at her for too long—when he tried, the pain curling in his stomach became unbearable, and he had to look away. “You are an archangel, the leader of Heaven, so why aren’t you bringing her _back_?”

“Resurrection is more of an executive decision,” Michael told him, grinning in amusement. “And, besides—I’m not entirely willing to give this vessel up. I finally have my sword. On Earth, I could be the supremely powerful. I could be strong enough to make it paradise. This body is mine now, and I intend to use it.”

Tyler, kneeling on the ground still, staring at his hands, said to Michael, “That isn’t your choice to make.”

“You’re right,” Michael told Tyler, and then laughed loudly, and hearing that familiar laugh as something so obviously not right packed a hard punch. “Grace chose when her soul took the blunt of an angel blade. Grace Winchester is no longer a dot on the map, Tyler Winchester, so do not pretend as though it is a grave injustice for me to do what is only right.”

Dean opened his mouth, but Cas beat him to it.

“You were supposed to be the best of us!” Cas screamed at Michael, his face pulled into anger and contempt and horror. “You were supposed to be fair, and just, and _righteous_!”

“I do not and have never taken orders from you, Castiel,” Michael growled, her eyes flashing, and she took a handful of steps closer until she was standing before Castiel, her eyes on his face. Dean wanted to reach out, wanted to look into the eyes and see if he could see even a little bit of Grace’s soul staring back, but he knew what Michael was saying was right—Grace was gone. He had watched his daughter die.

Dean’s loss hadn’t hit him yet. He was still in a calm numb. He wondered if he would survive the realization, or if the force of his grief would cause him to simply drop dead.

“She gave her life for you!” Tyler screamed, surging onto his feet, and Michael turned to face him. “You _owe_ her!”

“I owe humanity _nothing_ ,” Michael growled. “And, even if I did, the debt would not begin with the life of a soulless, spineless, scared little girl who was so afraid to fight that she unnecessarily sacrificed her own life. Do not build Grace Winchester up into a hero when she was nothing but a foolish soldier who would not accept dishonor.”

“Don’t know,” Dean ground out, staring down the body that used to be his daughter’s. “That sounds more heroic to me than anything you’ve ever done.”

“I did not have to end the apocalypse in this way,” Michael hissed at them. “I could have fought my brother like I was supposed to, and this world would have gone up in flames, and I wouldn’t have cared either way. But I know how strongly you Winchesters preach your brand of pacifism, so I did as you would wish, and I did the bare minimum, and now it is all rolling backwards. This world is a ticking time bomb, and I did it so that I would not owe this family one more minute of my precious time.”

All five of them stares at her for a long time, her eyes crazed, her chest heaving in her anger, and it was Dean that spoke first as he murmured, “I think we all know that you didn’t do shit for our benefit.”

Michael raised one eyebrow, and then laughed. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t, but it sounded good, right? Sounded _compelling_?” She shrugged. “Grace gave me the idea of how to end this apocalypse peacefully, and it was the easiest way to wipe my hands of the ordeal, so I took it. I would have killed her for her disobedience whether Lucifer got to it first or not.”

“How does this end?” Sam demanded. Michael didn’t even bother looking at him.

“Like this,” Michael said, reaching up and touching Grace’s anti-possession necklace around her throat, fingering the charm for a moment before ripping it off and throwing it off to the side, smirking carelessly. “This is how it ends. This is the last you will see of me. Thank you for playing your roles without complication, and, again—my condolences over the life of your daughter, Dean, Castiel.”

Michael turned, but then there was the sound of wings, and Milo suddenly appeared beside her, his face pulled tight, his eyes on her. Michael turned to look at him, her eyebrows rising questionably, and Milo flinched when she turned her full gaze on him.

“Milo,” Michael said mockingly, smirking. “You have not dared show your face to me since you pulled me from the cage. What marks such a grand occasion?”

“I figured I would stop by and make sure you locked our little brother’s cage up nice and tight,” Milo told the archangel, smirking as he glanced over to the clearing, but Dean could see how carefully he was looking anywhere other than Grace, but Dean couldn’t stop thinking, _since you pulled me from the cage_. “I don’t want any freak accidents. This century has seen enough, don’t you think?”

“I suppose you have a point,” Michael admitted, and then said, “It must be hard for you to speak to me when I am wearing this form.”

Milo didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her, and that said enough.

“Is there anything else you wanted from me?” Michael demanded when Milo didn’t say anything, glancing over her shoulder to look at her audience, winking at Tyler where he stood next to Allison, her hands clutching at him.

“Just one thing,” Milo said, and then smiled. “Just prophecy.”

And then he reached out, and he touched Michael’s face.

The wind picked up speed, picking up leaves, and Grace/Michael’s hair flew back from her face, away from the touch, as if that was the conductor that was suddenly making the weather act up. Cas grasped at Dean as Dean grasped for him, Sam and Allison and Tyler all one connected family unit as they watched the same events unfold, Milo’s hand on Grace/Michael’s face glowing, Michael’s eyes closed and, in that moment, Cas whispered, “What the hell?”

Grace/Michael’s eyes suddenly opened, green again, but the wind did not slow. She looked at Milo, looking at him like she had never seen him before, and then she whispered so softly that it was almost lost in the wind, “ _Azrael_?”

“Hello, angel,” Milo whispered, his voice thick, and his hand dropped as he offered her a small smile, taking two steps away, not looking from her eyes.  

Grace took a deep breath, breathing again, and then she looked over at Dean suddenly, as if he had called her name—and, if he had, he didn’t remember. She was staring at him, her eyes green and honest and peaceful, his daughter again, and he felt tears choke his throat as she smiled over at them so softly, so at peace, her hair twisting calmly in the wind.

“Dad,” Grace greeted, her voice otherworldly, her eyes and smile hers again, and Dean let out a sound like a whimper as he stumbled forward, his eyes wide, and he asked back, “Grace?”

“Hey, Dad,” she said, smiling widely, her eyes filling with tears.

“Grace, are you okay?” Cas asked her, stepping forward and staring at her, looking at her like she was an angel, and she seemed to notice that because her smile turned sad. “Grace, sweetie, what is going on?”

“It’s okay, Dad,” she whispered to them, smiling through her tears. “It’s gonna be okay. I got him.”

Grace turned and looked back at Milo, at _Azrael_ , and he smiled at her like he was looking at something so precious, and he _was_ looking at something precious because he was looking at Dean’s little girl, and Dean didn’t think he had more tears to offer until they began to fall in that moment, understanding in an unspoken way what would happen next. Grace smiled back at Milo, and then she turned to look at her family one more time, one long look at all of them standing together, and tears started to spill from her eyes as her skin began to glow, and nothing more than terror kept Dean from sprinting over and throwing himself into infinity with her.

“I’ll see you guys again,” she assured them, her voice choked as she let out a wounded laugh. “Later rather than sooner, okay?”

Grace reached up and rubbed away her tears. Her veins were glowing the same glory light.

“I’m proud of us,” Grace announced, and she smiled, broken and battered and beautiful and so peaceful that Dean thought he was going to start screaming because they all knew. They knew what this meant. But no one said anything, just stared through their tears as they watched Grace stand before them, the strongest person in the world, the only person who could win the war, and no one knew what to say to Dean and Cas’s daughter as she glowed like an angel.

Grace took a shaky deep breath, more tears falling as she turned back to Milo, and he nodded slowly, looking tortured. She nodded back and then smiled a little, and she closed her eyes.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered to them.

Through his eyelids, he saw the bright glow, and his skin felt the heat of the angel’s glory, and something horrible like acceptance slithered into his chest, as if this moment, only minutes after her death, was enough to bring him some type of closure. He felt like he was burning from the inside out as the glow dimmed, and he paused for a moment before opening his eyes again, not knowing what he would see, knowing that, at this point, he would ever either be dead inside or so, so alive.

Milo was gone. Grace’s body lay crumpled on the ground. Still.

And they knew.

But still, Castiel was off and running at the drop of a dime, and Dean was fumbling on his feet after him, his knees shaking, unable to keep himself up, his vision tunneling as he looked at his daughter and thought _no no no we had you you were okay you were here you can’t leave us what will I do without you Grace no please come back pull a miracle sweetheart please don’t leave us_.

Cas pressed his shaking fingers to her throat, her pulse point. He shuddered when he felt nothing, and then he pulled her softly onto his lap, pulling her against his chest and cradling her like the way he did when she was three and wanted to know all of his stories, and Dean would wander downstairs hours after her bedtime and he would find Cas whispering stories into her hair as she slept curled against him. The thought brought Dean to his knees, and Cas looked up at him, his expression dazed, and Dean wobbled on his knees before him, feeling like he was about to be sick.

Dean thought she had a chance. She was so strong, and she was holding on so hard. He thought she might be okay. He thought—

Dean didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a noise, and he barely breathed. He just stayed there, on his knees in front of Cas as he held their daughter’s body in his arms, and he wondered how much further he could possibly fall.

He felt Sam’s presence behind him before he heard him or felt him. Sam was saying something when he grabbed Dean’s shoulder, squeezing it so tight that Dean would have found it painful if he wasn’t caught in this horrible nothingness of shock and acceptance, two disgusting things tangling together that separated him from the scene, that made him feel above it all looking in. he looked up at Sam, who was looking down at Grace with watering eyes, and Allison stood a pace or two behind him, her hands cupped over her face as tears fell freely. Tyler kept his arm around her shoulder, keeping her tucked protectively around his body, but he looked the same way that Dean felt, staring down at Grace, and Dean wondered if Tyler felt as though he had killed her.

Milo’s voice shattered the numbness of Dean’s consciousness when he appeared next to Cas, on his knees, his expression desperate, and he whimpered to Grace’s body, “You were supposed to wake up.”

Dean reached out a shaking hand and touched Grace’s forehead. He expected her to be cold, but she was warm, feverishly so. He kept his hand on her face for a moment more before he couldn’t hold his hand up anymore, and it fell weakly to his side.

“You were supposed to wake up,” Milo insisted again, just as softly, just as lost. “You pushed Michael out and I caged him in the throne room and you were supposed to be here when I got back and you’re not. This was your choice, Grace. Where are you?”

Dean flinched as Milo’s voice cracked.

“You _son of a bitch_!” Milo suddenly screamed, rocketing to his feet, his face turning bright red and angry as tears poured down his cheeks, and he looked upwards toward a Heaven with so many felled kings. “What kind of Father, what kind of _God_ , are you? I _believed_ in you! I loved you, and honored you, and you _left_! You left me here, you left us _all_ here! When you named me, you promised me—promised that I could have one thing. Well, this is it, you leaving bastard! Bring her _back_!”

Milo gasped in air like it was poison as he whispered, “Bring her back.”

None of them said a word as Milo sunk back onto his knees, his eyes never leaving Grace for a moment, and Dean forgot in that moment that he was looking at an angel, that this angel was an archangel that controlled death, and he was being so human for his daughter, a seemingly meaningless blip on his radar. A blip that caused the archangel of death to mourn.

“Grace,” Milo whispered, a prayer.

Grace took in a breath, and then let it go.

“Grace?” Dean demanded, incredulous, hopeful, worried. Grace pulled in another rough breath, and then her eyelids fluttered, and the hopefulness in Dean’s chest turned suffocating as he asked again, “Grace?”

Grace opened her eyes slowly, blinking against the sun, and looked up at Cas, confused. She glanced at Dean, and then at Sam and Allison and Tyler, who had fallen to their knees in the spaces in between, and then her eyes rested on Milo, and he looked at her like she had looked him in the eye and smiled as she hung the moon in the sky.

Grace looked back up at Cas, and then blinked slowly before hoarsely asking, “Did we win?”

Milo let out a choked laugh. Sam grinned, Allison burst into tears, and Tyler looked stunned. Dean felt like the relief was going to crush him.

Cas held her close, and he closed his eyes with a soft, small, peaceful smile as he whispered, “Yes, Grace. We won.”

“Good,” she said, and then passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Slang


	16. Epilogue: Several Months Later

_~*~_

_Grace Winchester_

“Is it working?” Grace asked, eyeing the mirror with trepidation as Milo took great care to lean it carefully on top of the desk in Dean’s office/man-cave hybrid, squinting into the depths. It felt uncomfortable to look at a mirror and see nothing reflected back, just a sheet of thick glass-like material. Milo was completely undisturbed by the entire thing, and went the length to make sure it was sitting straight before sinking down onto the couch beside her, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

“Give it a second,” Milo told her. “It’s adjusting to this plane.”

“You make it sound like it’s alive.”

Milo shrugged, but didn’t deny it, and Grace figured that, like most things to do with Milo’s connection to Heaven, it was best to just not ask.

“Any second,” Milo said, grinning.

And then, like a television getting plugged in, it flickered to life.

“Holy shit,” Jo said, leaning in way too close, her eyes wide. “No way.”

“Merry Christmas!” Grace cried happily, throwing her arms out.

“Grace, holy shit!” Jo yelled back, and then there was the sound of other voices and shoving as people jockeyed for positions, and Grace watched as they all managed to squeeze into the frame, Jo still occasionally throwing elbows even if her and Kevin had settled for just sitting on the ground.

“Hey, guys!” Grace greeted, and then wagged her eyebrows. “We won! Again!”

“You made the archangel Michael your bitch,” Jo hollered, and then burst into applause. “Beautiful. Magnificent work. Ten out of ten.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Grace said, pretending to bow, and Milo and she laughed.

“She only died twice in the process,” Milo remarked, winking over at her. “For a Winchester, that’s actually below average.”

Mary rolled her eyes, but Bobby laughed.

“I can’t believe this worked,” Grace cheered, grinning up at the mirror to Heaven, practically the fucking Mirror of Erised at this point. “This was such a long shot.”

“Hello,” Milo snorted, pointing to his own chest. “Archangel of Death. Newfound HBIC of Heaven. I think I can pull off a couple of minor miracles at this point.”

“You’re so obtuse,” Grace snapped, and Milo grinned down at her.

Jo groaned. “At least tell me that you two have kissed.”

“I made more than one archangel my bitch at the apocalypse,” Grace told her, smirking as she winked, and the entire Roadhouse howled with laughter as Milo frowned beside her, obviously not too happy to be knocked down so many pegs. Grace nudged him with her arm, asking him with her eyes subtly if she was forgiven, and Milo just responded to her with an eye roll.

“How’s everything?” Bobby asked, curiously peering around the room on the other side of his mirror. Grace smiled.

“Good, really good,” she told them cheerfully, finally calm and peaceful and unstressed. “Everything’s settled back down. Everyone is alive and back to work and the world keeps on spinning. It’s pretty much all we can ask for at this point, and it’s all that we want. The only current problem is that everyone is here for Christmas and all Ty does is bitch and moan about sleeping in the panic room.”

“I heard that!” Tyler yelled from the doorway and then took a running start and dove at the couch, and Grace managed to scream and dive out of the way before he broke her neck landing on top of her and Milo. Milo grumbled and pushed the younger boy off of him, rolling his eyes, entirely too used to it, and Grace kicked Tyler in the shin as he settled down in between her and Milo, putting his arm around the back of the couch to keep them separated. He shoved her face into the side of the couch, gazing curiously up at the mirror. “Hey,” he said. “You got it to work.”

“You’re a dipshit,” Grace told him.

“If I would have known,” Ty sighed regretfully, “I would have worn my better tie.”

“You’re not _wearing_ a tie,” Grace replied before punching him in the chest. “Stop being stupid or leave.”

Tyler ignored her and instead grinned up at the mirror, where the people on the other end were watching them with mixed amusement and confusion. “Hello, those from the other realm. I am the simple Tyler Winchester, and I wore Lucifer to the prom and won Best Dressed.”

“Did not.”

“Did too,” Ty insisted. “In fact, I _killed_ it. Ha! Get it? Because Lucifer as me stabbed you to death?”

Milo did Grace the pleasure of hitting Ty hard in the back of the head. Tyler scowled and shot the angel a dangerous look, but they knew Tyler was just joking around, infected by the holiday spirit the way he always was. He grinned and hooked an arm around Grace’s neck and pulled her head closer so he could plant a kiss on the top of her head before mussing up her hair.

“You’re strange,” Bobby told Ty.

“Thank you,” he responded, and then laughed. “You’re Bobby?”

Grace took the time to introduce Tyler to all of the Roadhouse crew, Ty taking the time to tease and joke with them all, getting them to laugh and open up and in a way that Grace couldn’t comprehend. Ty wasn’t as much of a genius statistically as Grace was, not where the IQ numbers tell, but Tyler was smart because he knew how to talk to people, how to accept them and have them accept him in turn, and his ability to be liked by everyone would be more valuable than Grace’s general know-it-all tendencies ever will be.

Grace saved the introductions for John and Mary last, and Ty took a long moment to look at John, holding his breath as he held his gaze through the mirror, and Grace watched cautiously as Tyler took a deep breath before he smiled, welcoming John silently, and Grace figured that was a better start than hers and John’s had been, so she shouldn’t be too worried.

Tyler was in the middle of arguing with the Roadhouse crew about superior brands of eggnog (“That brand doesn’t exist anymore.” “Doesn’t mean it’s not better.” “Well, we wouldn’t _know_ , would we?”) when there was a knock on the door, and the three on the couch froze, their eyes widening.

“Hey, yes-men,” Sam called, popping his head into the room. “You hungry? Dean’s got—”

“Herpes?” Tyler finished for him. “I know, Uncle Cas told me.”

Sam made a disgusted sound before saying, “No, asshole, _he_ _made burgers_. Do you want me to—?”

Sam spotted the mirror, and his eyes went wide.

“What is that?” he asked, his voice flat.

“Sam,” Jo said, scandalized, “your hair is gray. Your long, flowing mane is _gray_.”

“ _What is that?_ ” Sam asked again, stepping into the room and shutting the door.

“Surprise,” Grace cried weakly.

“Milo, what did you _do_?” Sam demanded to the angel when his son and niece were obviously too terrified to offer him an actual explanation, and Milo sent them both an exasperated stare before turning back to Sam, smiling easily.

“Think of it as Skype,” Milo offered. “Just with a better connection.”

“You three are going to kill me someday,” Sam told them, but he crossed the room and pulled up a chair next to the couch, settling down into it slowly as he looked up at the mirror, his mask cracking and letting his emotion through, and Sam had to swallow heavily before he said, “Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Sam,” Bobby greeted, his voice choked with emotion. “Hear things are goin’ good for you, boy.”

“Yeah,” Sam said thickly, and he had to clear his throat before he continued, “yeah, it’s going great. No thanks to the spawn that somehow shares my DNA.”

“Hey,” Tyler said, narrowing his eyes at his father. “I take that personally. Dean would be thankful to have me as his son.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Dean said from the doorway, his arms crossed and his eyes on the mirror. The group on the couch jumped out of their skin, and even the Roadhouse crew seemed startled by the silent addition to their party. Grace and Sam both flew around, their eyes wide and guilty, but Dean didn’t seem bothered by whose fault it was. He raised his eyebrows at them, his eyes flickering between them and the mirror, and said, “I assume I know who’s in charge of the mysterious looking glass.”

“Uh,” Milo eloquently responded.

Dean rolled his eyes before calling over his shoulder, “Hey, Cas! Some friends showed up as a surprise.”

“Dean,” Castiel’s grave voice came from the living room, “all of your friends are dead.”

Dean and Grace both burst into identical laughter.

Castiel appeared behind Dean, Allison at his side, and they looked and saw the mirror. Castiel blinked slowly. “Oh,” Castiel said. “That makes sense, then.”

“I expected you to be more surprised,” Grace admitted, feeling like the situation was a little too anticlimactic, and that they definitely should have been able to have a lot more fun about it.

“Hmm,” Dean said, looking between Grace and Milo. “Then maybe you two should talk a little softer when you plan.”

“I told you,” Milo said to Grace sullenly, his expression exasperated.

“Well _good for you_.”

“Children,” Tyler mediated, pushing the couple’s faces away from each other, squeezing his hand around Grace’s face so hard that she made some sort of fish face, and Dean laughed at her despite himself. Grace narrowed her eyes at him, shaking Ty off and pouting as her parents shooed Grace, Tyler, and Milo to sit on the floor while they and Allison flopped onto the couch instead. Grace rolled her eyes and leaned back against Dean’s leg. Castiel reached out and touched her hair, as if he was assuring himself she was real, the same way he had done so since he had held her body in Stull Cemetery.

Grace shook that thought away and announced, “We’ve probably only have forty minutes left before the connection breaks. Better make these hellos quick before Cinderella has to go home.”

Milo frowned at her for the reference, but his hand still reached out and entwined with hers, making her smile.

Dean leaned back in the couch, an arm thrown over the back, fingers skimming Castiel’s shoulders, and he smiled easily and guiltless and contentedly at the family he had lost so many years ago, at peace with all of the ghosts that had once haunted him, and he said, “Don’t want to tell too many stories, Grace—gotta save some for the curtain call, huh?”

Grace tilted her head back to look at her dad, and Dean just smiled down at her and winked, and she knew that he appreciated her attempt to give him back a piece of his family more than he was letting on to the rest of them, and that was enough to make her relax.

She leaned back against his legs and fell into the easy conversation between the family departed and the family that remained, and Grace had a lot of reasons to smile over the last couple of months but her cheeks hadn’t hurt like they did when they wished the other side a goodbye after a loud and rowdy and hilarious conversation that had filled the time, topics ranging from classical literature to terrible haircuts to who won a rock-paper-scissors game thirty years ago and didn’t have to search for a werewolf in a dirty sewer.

Bobby and John laughed hysterically as they both told a story about a time where Sam was sick at the Singer house and he sneezed and snot flew all over Dean, and John had thought Dean was about to go bathe in acid to get the germs off of his skin. Tyler laughed so hard he cried.

It was the best closure they ever could have gotten.

Grace sat in the middle of it all as Milo took the mirror away, leaving them alone with their beating hearts and the people they loved the most in the world, and Grace couldn’t be more thankful for her choices, since they had lead her here, to this moment. No matter how much she had to give, no matter how much she had to fight and how many times she lost the fight for her life, it was worth it to sit here now and know that her life and her family’s lives would all be okay.

It was over. It was finally over.

They had all the reason in the world to be happy.

*

“Thank you,” Grace whispered into the empty air.

Milo appeared beside her, his hand already reaching out to push a lock of her hair behind her ear, and he offered her a calm smile before he responded, “For what?”

“For today.” She turned to lean on her side, looking up at the angel under bright stars in a chilly sky. “It means a lot to me that you went through such great lengths for something that only lasted an hour.”

“Of course I would,” Milo told her like it was absurd that she would doubt his willingness to make her happy, and it still struck her as dumbfounding to know that this archangel had screamed at God to save her. When the archangel had known he couldn’t save her, he had demonstrated a miracle both great and terrible, and Grace was still recovering from realizing that Milo believed she had been worth it. In moments like this, when he was looking at her with that smile and that look in his eyes, she could barely believe it was real at all.

But she knew Heaven. And she knew Hell would never be this kind.

Grace reached a hand up to touch Milo, and he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips, smiling.

“What are you thinking?” he murmured.

“I’m thinking we need to get off of the hood of my ride before we dent it,” Grace told him honestly, a symptom of the foot-in-mouth disease she had inherited from her lovely biological father, and Milo laughed so hard that she was sure the stars heard him.

Grace slipped off the hood of the 1964 Chevy Impala Dean had surprised her with about two weeks after the apocalypse, the same one she had seen him working on before this mess had started. He had handed over the keys the moment he had finished working on it, smiling sheepishly and admitting that he had intended to give her the car the minute he picked it up at auction, and Grace had been so speechless that she had forgone words and instead shrieked while jumping at him and throwing her arms around his neck, babbling out a bunch of sounds that sounded somewhat like a thank you. Castiel had stood in the background smiling wide as she hopped into the driver’s seat excitedly and turned the key, letting out another scream at the purr of the engine.

Grace reverently stroked the hood, whispering a soft apology to the strain they may have put on her, and Milo just humored her by not making a sarcastic comment from behind her. The party was still rumbling on from inside of the house, shouting from what sounded like a game of Operation breaching the windows, and Grace knew that it was only a matter of time before one of her overprotective parents would be gazing out the window, making sure she hadn’t once again disappeared into thin air. Not like Grace could necessarily blame them for worrying.

She was jumpy enough when she found herself alone. She couldn’t imagine how her parents were handling it when she was continuously pulling away, moving in the direction of college preparation, dropping off the face of the earth for a few minutes at a time to have coffee or crepes with her angel boyfriend in France or explore the Coliseum in Rome or other things she was entirely not afraid to exploit from her all-powerful beau. And Milo seemed to enjoy learning about human nature, despite having watched over it. He told her once, standing on a skyscraper in China watching the sunset, that it’s entirely different to watch human nature than it is to become a part of it.

Grace turned back to look at Milo, a smile already on her face.

“What?” he asked immediately, frowning. “Is there something on my face again?”

“No,” Grace said, letting out a choked laugh but tugging him closer, and he took the step remaining in between them, smiling happily as he tucked her into his chest, running a hand soothingly down her back. “I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around everything that’s happened in the last few months.”

“I understand,” Milo told her, tucking her head under his chin, and she breathed in his smell of fresh air after a rainstorm, her hands curling into his shirt.

“I love you,” Grace blurted out, and then froze. “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”

“Okay,” he replied, but she could tell he was grinning.

“I mean, I mean it and all, but that wasn’t what I was going to say, like at all.”

“Okay.”

“Can ‘okay’ _not_ be our ‘always’, and instead you talk to me with real words?”

Milo, of course, didn’t get the reference, but he did softly frame her face with his hands and press their lips together, chaste and emotional and a silent promise, and Grace’s grip on his shirt tightened as she pulled away and looked up at him nervously, hopefully.

“I love you too, angel,” Milo whispered, and then smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Oh,” Grace replied, blinking up at him, because he was brighter than the stars. “That’s good, then.”

Milo just smiled and leaned forward to press his lips against her forehead.

“Want to see the Aurora Borealis?” Milo asked.

“Jeez, I thought you’d never ask.” Grace glanced over at the house and found her fathers leaning in the window, both of their eyebrows up expectantly, and she grinned sheepishly when she caught their eye, but Castiel dropped the expression to smile back, his eyes fond and loving. Dean just crossed his arms over his chest and heaved a sigh, but she saw the smile he was trying so hard to bite back.

She sent him a silent question in a language she and Dean knew best, and Dean held her gaze with a disapproving stare before he couldn’t hold back the smile anymore, and he gestured for her to go, and she sent him a thankful smile as Milo reached one hand up, and waved.

Grace kept her eyes open as she and Milo were lifted in a flutter of wings and, for a moment, the stars looks like angels falling from the sky.

 

~*~

_Dean Winchester_

“She’s all grown up,” Cas remarked sadly.

“Kind of.”

Cas sighed for what had to have been the thirtieth time in the last two minutes that had passed since they had watched Milo and Grace disappear from the backyard, a new habit for the both of them, and Dean couldn’t help the smile that spread over his face. Having everyone home and safe was better than Paradise to him.

Dean thought about the mirror, and he felt contentedness spread through his chest.

Grace and Milo’s gift to them had been worth more to Dean than he had let on. He had heard them discuss the idea in whispers in the living room when it looked like he wasn’t listening, but he had only heard them talk about it once and he hadn’t even thought it was possible. To walk into the room and see that they had made it possible, that Grace had wanted to give him one more hello to his family before the curtain call, really meant so much to him.

John and Mary had been smiling, so accepting, and Bobby had been teary-eyed, and so had Ellen and Jo but they probably would have slit his throat if he would have teased them about it, dimensions away or not. Kevin was even cordial, and Ash stayed sober enough that he didn’t fall off of his barstool.

So many people from chapters of his life since passed had been there today, and Dean couldn’t be more thankful that Grace had given him that.

Cas seemed to be happy, so happy, and Sam had a new skip to his step after what was arguably the best Christmas any of them had ever had. Even Tyler and Allison had seemed to feel the shift.

Dean had thought that he, Sam, and Cas had been free of the weight of their past, but he had been wrong. It had still lingered, like a chill in the air, but Dean should have realized when Grace had told them all of those stories in the bunker that all three of them were still clinging with one hand to what happened in the past, ready to reach back and yank the proof of their misfortunes or bad decisions back into relevancy. There were some things that Dean had pushed away and had written off as having forgiven himself for it, but he hadn’t. He had simply just forgotten, and that was never the same thing.

To see them smiling, to see them happy, Dean realized that Grace had been right—they forgave him. They weren’t holding onto the past. They had moved on. Dean knew he should take a leaf out of their book.

The acceptance was staggering, the same as it was light. It felt like walking on air, but soft wind was passing him by, ready to set him into a misstep, and to let him plunge back down.

Dean had forgiven himself for a lot of things, and he had forgotten most of it. This was the first time that he didn’t just forgive himself—he forgave everyone. He forgave all of the choices that brought them to that point, he forgave them for putting themselves in a deadly position, and he forgave an absentee god for letting fate be cruel.

It was time Dean moved on.

Dean Winchester had done so much in his life. It was time for him to let himself breathe again.

Cas reached out and touched him softly on the arm, bringing him back into awareness, and Dean blinked, looking around from the back window to instead look at his husband. Cas offered him a small smile and let his hand slid down to take Dean’s, and Dean grinned as he tugged him closer, pulling him into a tight embrace. Cas relaxed against him, pressing his face against Dean’s neck and taking a deep breath. Dean reached up and ran his fingers through Cas’s hair, turning to press a kiss against his temple.

“We raised a hero,” Dean murmured, brushing his knuckles down Cas’s face, his voice soft. Cas closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s about time we loosen the reigns, put our feet up, and let her live.”

It took a moment, but Cas eventually nodded slowly, clutching Dean tighter.

“She’ll be alright,” Dean whispered.

“I know,” Cas breathed before pulling away from Dean far enough to tug him by the hand back to the living room, back to where Sam and Allison were bickering about what board game they should play next that no one will be able to cheat on. Tyler was eating a piece of pie with his hands, too distracted with his endeavor to care that his parents were about to settle on Scrabble (and Allison had obviously never seen Sam play it, because Dean’s brother damn sure knew how to cheat his way through a word game).

Dean pulled Cas down onto the loveseat and threw his arm around his shoulders, pulling his closer, nuzzling his face into his husband’s temple. Cas smiled against the show of affection and leaned into Dean, closing his eyes and angling himself closer.

“I love you,” Cas murmured into him, and Dean smiled, at peace.

“I love you too, Cas,” Dean answered just as lowly, putting his arms around the former angel and holding him close, taking a deep breath and relaxing at Cas’s scent of thunder and lightning. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Just,” Dean started, holding him even tighter, “for everything. Every single thing.”

Cas tilted his head up and pressed their lips together, and Dean could feel him smiling.

“Okay, you two, that’s enough,” Sam teased them good-naturedly, throwing a crumpled napkin at them, and Dean pulled away from his husband with a glare that didn’t sway Sam in the slightest. “We see enough of Dean Two making out with an angel—we don’t need to double the order.”

“My house,” Dean immaturely replied, but he and Cas still moved inches away from each other with a laugh. Dean leaned back, settling into the couch, and Cas leaned close enough to him that their arms were pressed together but only their hands overlapped.

Dean was making a firm argument that they should play Guitar Hero instead of boring board games when the back door opened and Grace and Milo stumbled through, both of them with snow in their hair, Grace’s eyes wide and bright, shivering a little. Milo carefully and courteously began to slip off his shoes and coat at the door but Grace shed them as she walked, kicking off one shoe after the other and leaving a potential death trap for a clueless or unobservant Winchester later in the night, and she threw her coat on the back of a kitchen chair before flopping down onto the rug in front of the television stand, turning her head to look at her family.

“What did we miss?” she asked casually.

“Guitar Hero or Scrabble?” Sam asked her.

“Where’s the remote?” Grace immediately replied, ducking to the television stand in search of all the right remotes, and Sam pouted as Dean and Tyler cheered happily. Cas rolled his eyes but still reluctantly accepted the drum materials when Grace handed them out, and Dean accepted one of the guitars as Tyler dove for the other. Grace cradled the microphone while they all set up shop with the old technology, Tyler practically humming with excitement. Sam pouted from the couch. Allison just kept smiling, watching the four of them situate habitually around the television eagerly, and Milo leaned against the doorway from the kitchen, smiling as he watched Grace, and Dean couldn’t help but to think that he would live the rest of his life in this moment if he could.

Grace stayed standing in front of the television, blocking the song list, and she didn’t sit down until she chose, smiling smugly. When the first notes for Sympathy for the Devil began playing, Ty turned to scowl at her.

“I hate you,” he told her fondly.

“I hate you too, baby cousin,” she replied, smirking.

Dean grinned as the game gained momentum, Grace’s slightly-terrible singing barely managing to block out Sam’s backseat abuse of Cas’s terrible drumming, and Allison haggled Tyler’s inability to handle a guitar with grace, and Dean just couldn’t stop smiling the entire time, and Milo’s laughter became the background soundtrack as Ty began to ignore the game in favor of attempting to furtively stick his foot in Grace’s face.

Dean was here, with his family, forgiven. For a lack of a better phrase, he was in a state of grace.

He couldn’t think of a better ending to this chapter in his life.

He just hoped the next one had a little less Satan.

~*~

Gabriel sat back in his chair, thousands of miles away, and turned off his omniscient television viewing of the Winchester Christmas Extravaganza, throwing the remote somewhere across the room. He snorted and kicked up his feet, stretching one arm behind his head while the other rummaged in his pocket.

“Idiots,” Gabriel said fondly, smirking, and then took a large bite out of his candy bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading this story! It means a lot to me, and I'm happy that you made it through this far!
> 
> So long for now, friends.
> 
> xo Slang


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